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™I INTERNATIONAL
SOCIALIST REVIEW
A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST THOUGHT
VOLUME 1.
JULY, 1900 — JUNE, 1901
CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR &ICOMPANY
1 90 1
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CONTENTS
ABBOTT, LEONARD D.—
Edward Carpenter and His Mes-
sage 27?
A Latter-Day Brook Farm 700
ANDERSON, ANTON—
Socialism In Sweden 810
ANDREWS, MISS E. F.—
The Monopoly of Intellect 768
BOOTHMAN, H. L.—
Philosophy of Imperialism, 1 229
Philosophy of Imperialism, II.... 28$
BOUCHER. JOSEPH—
International Congress of Social-
1st Students 418
BROWN, W. T.—
Plutocracy or Democracy 1
CLEVELAND, MISS ROSE ALICE—
Release (poem) 704
COMMONS, JOHN R.—
Social Evolution 608
CROSBY, ERNEST—
Civilization (poem)...,, 862
Joy in Work (poem) 650
Reverence (poem) 797
DEBS, EUGENE V.—
Socialism in the United States... 129
FERRI, ENRICO—
Social Defense and Class Defense
in Criminal Law 542
FRANZ, J. L.—
How Much Work is Necessary... 847
GALE, HARLOW—
The Relation of Instructor and
Student 486
GREENBAUM, LEON—
Socialism in the Middle West.... 696
HALL, BOI/rON—
The Monthly Rent (parable) 304
HARDIE, KEIR—
Labor Movement In Great Brit-
ain 678
HARRIM1AN, JOB—
The Republican and Democratic
Platforms 136
Some Questions at the Paris Con-
gress 805
HAYES, MAX L.—
Trades Unions and Socialism 48
American Federation of Labor
Convention 419
Trade Union Movement in Amer-
ica wo
HERRON, GEO. D.—
A Plea for Unity of American
Socialists 821
HITCH, MARCUS—
Karl Marx and the Money Ques-
tion 29
Reply to Mr. Stone 428
HYNDMAN, H. M.—
England and International So-
cialism 17
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST BU-
REAU—
To the Labor Parties of All
Countries 795
JONES, MOTHER—
Civilization in Southern Mills 589
"JULIAN"—
Paganism and Christianity 753
KAUTSKY, KARL—
Trades Unions and Socialism 598
KUFFERATH, LALLA—
Women in Belgium 859
LAFARGUE, PAUL—
Socialism and the Intellectuals... 84
LAGARDELLE, H.—
Trade ' Union Movement in
France 705
LA MONTE, ROBERT RIVES—
Science and Socialism 160
"LEGION"—
Straws 623
LIEBKNECHT, WILHELM—
A Bad Quarter of an Hour 176
LTNiDHjOLM, S. V.—
Chicago Lockout 65
LONGUET, JEAN—
French Political Parties and the
Recent Elections 23
MCDONALD, J. R.—
Socialist Movement In Great Brit-
ain 616
MARXIST—
Trust and Socialism 212
Theology and Science 529
Summing Up 778
MILHAUD, EDGAR—
Socialist Propaganda Among Wo-
men in Germany 713
MURAI, F.—
A Letter From Japan 719
NOYES, W. H.—
The Implications of Democracy.. 193
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60073
OCT 1 1901
CONTENTS
H 2>BlfB0RTCN, MZ98 CAROLINE H.
irw* T& e Charity Girl (novel)
/IrlJ 661, *87, 721. 798
* — POTTEBK, EUOBNE—
The International Party (poem).. 383
J
-QUEIjCH, h.—
The Working Class Movement in
England
81
RATCL1FFB, WALTER A.—
The Kingdom of Competition.... 106
JtETTNOLDS, S. M.—
The Anthracite Coal Strike 472
RUSSIAN COMMITTEE IN PARIS—
The Revolutionary Movement in
Russia 789
6CHIAVI, ALBSSANDRO—
The Political Situation in Italy... 77
Socialists and Anarchists in Italy 183
The Congress of Italian Social-
ists 282
Socialism in Italy 679
SIMONS, A. M.—
Dangerous Questions 102
The Negro Problem 204
The International Congress 257
The United States and World
PoUtics 449
SIMONS, MAY WOOD—
Some Ethical Problems 836
Education and Socialism 600
3TONE, N. I.—
Karl Marx On the Money Ques-
tion 263
TELLER, MISS CHARLOTTE—
Wilhelm Llebknecht 155
UNTBRMANN, ERNEST—
Evolution or Revolution 406
Mind and Socialism 629
TAIL, CHAS. H.—
The Negrro Problem 464
The Political and Economic As-
pect of the Trust Question 148
VANDERVBLDE, EMILE—
Decadence of Personal Property
in Europe, 1 329
Decadence of Personal Property
in Europe, II 395
The Century of the Workingmen 481
"VINCK, EMILEr-
The Legislative Elections in Bel-
gium 27
Universal Suffrage in Belgium... 180
Municipal Socialism 624
Socialism in Belgium 782
WILSON, J. STTTT—
The Present Moral Conflict 386
WHITAKER, HERMANN—
Welssmannlsm and Its Relation
to Socialism 618
Some Misconceptions of Marx... 769
WRIOIiEfr, C. WESTON—
Socialism in Canada 683
DEPARTMENTS.
SOCIALISM ABROAD—
A. M. CUmons and Ernest Unter-
znann.
Australia 733
Austria 372, 427, 493
Belgium 125, 870, 4M, 4*6, 608, 663, 812
Bulgaria 812
Denmark 496, 668, 654, 732
England 367, 664
France.... 368, 425, 496, 665, 651, 730, 810
Germany 871, 426, 495, 666, 809
Holland 126, 869, 428
Italy 127, 372, 427, 494, 567, 652
Japan 567, 811
Russia 568, 729, 810
Spain 732, 812
Switzerland 568, 731
THE WORLD OF LABOR—
Max S. Hayes.
114, 187, 251, 373, 429, 497, 569, 655, 734
SOCIALISM AND RELIGION—
Geo. D. Herron.
433, 501, 674, 659, 737
BOOK REVIEWS—
A. M. Simons.
Awakening of the East; Pierre
Leroy Beaulieu 578
Beyond the Black Ocean; F. Mo
Grady 606
Carpenter, Edw., Poet and Pro-
phet; Ernest H. Crosby 741
China's Only Hope; Chang Chih-
Tung 439
Clarion Club; Robert Swift 678
Commercialism and Child Labor. 440
Comparative Psychology; Jacques
Loeb 819
Country Without Strikes; Henry
Demarest Lloyd 112
Dawn-Thought; W. Lloyd 821
Emancipation of the Workers;
Raphael Buck 250
Ethics of Evolution; James T.
Bixby 580
Evolution of Immortality; Rosi-
cruciae 364
Expansion Under New World
Conditions; Josiah Strong 441
From Slavery to Freedom; Chas.
H. Davies 681
Fruitfulness; Emile Zola 606
Glorious House of Savoy, The;
Francis Sceusa 365
Image Breakers, The; Gertrude
Dix 580
Impending Crisis, The; Basil
Bouroff 250
Inalienable Rights of Men; J. R
Rogers 508
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iv
CONTENTS
Industrial and Pecuniary Em-
ployment; Prof. Thorsteln Veb-
len 739
Light on the Deep; Geo. H. Graf-
ton 607
Living Wage, The; Robert
Blatchford 441
Monopolies and Trusts; R. T. Ely 109
Nequa; Jack Adams 364
Newest England; Henry Demar-
est Lloyd 438
Nineteenth Century; Havelock
Ellis 821
Oratory; Its Requirements and
Its Rewards; John P. Alt geld.. 661
Our Nation's Need; J. A. Con-
well 581
People's Marx, The; Gabriel De-
ville 662
Peru Before the Conquest; G. B.
Benham 741
Philippines, The; Albert G. Rob-
inson 580
Plain Talk in Psalm and Para-
ble; Ernest Crosby 439
Plutocracy's Statistics; H. L.
Bliss 364
Politics of the Nazarene; O. D.
Jones 820
Poverty of Philosophy; Karl
Marx 311
Real Chinese Question, The;
Chester Holcombe 506
Real Socialism; Robert Blatch-
ford 441
Reformers' Year Book; Joseph
Edwards 821
Representative Democracy; Jno.
R. Commons 245
Restricted Industry; William H.
Barry 681
Rumblings; J. A. Wayland 821
Science and the Worklngmen;
Ferdinand Lassalle 679
Shattered Idols; A Lawyer 608
Socialism and Modern Science;
Enrico Ferrl 506
Socialism, Revolution and Inter-
nationalism; Gabriel Deville.... 679
Socialists in French Municipali-
ties; Chas. H. Kerr & Co 113
Solaris Farm; Milan C. Edson... 608
Solution of the Social Problem;
C. E. Dietrich 581
State and Socialism; Gabriel De-
ville 679
Story of Nineteenth Century and
Modern Science; Henry Smith
Williams 507
Summary of Report of New York
Bureau of Labor Statistics for
1900 661
Trust, The; William M. Collier... 363
Trust Problem, The; Prof. Jer.
W. Jenks 661
Two Men and Some Women;
Walter Marlon Raymond 678
Visit to a Gnani; A. Edward Car-
penter 740
World Politics; Paul S. Reinsch.. 248
AMONG THE PERIODICALS—
365, 442, 509, 581, 662, 742
EDITORIALS—
A. M. Simons.
Capitalism in the Universities... 666
Chicago and St. Louis Strikes.... 58
Chicago Teachers 447
Chinese Situation, The 121
College Claas-Consclousness 686
Expansion and the Chinese Ques-
tion 66
Financial Notes 445, 610, 684
Impending Danger to Socialism,
An ., 744
International Organisation 190
Letters of Acceptance of Bryan
and McKinley 264
Recent Elections, The 380
Salutatory 53
Socialist Tactics 824
Some Colossal Lying 379
Some Proposed Improvements.... 316
Study in International Politics, A 666
Vice Crusades 447
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T25 INTERNATIONAL
SOCIALIST REVIEW
Vol. I JULY, 1900 No. 1
PLUTOCRACY OR DEMOCRACY?
There are many reasons for believing that the supreme polit-
ical struggle of the coming century will be between plutocracy
and democracy. The question which will, I believe, transcend
all others is the question which is involved in those two terms:
Shall we have a plutocracy? or shall we have a democracy? Be-
tween those two we must choose^ so far as choice has anything
to do with the matter. And upon the issue of that struggle and
that choice depend, as upon nothing else, the moral interests of
mankind.
It seems to me to be a good thing to keep that fact and that
issue clearly before our minds. Indeed,Ican hardly conceive it pos-
sible that we shall not see it more clearly and feel its compulsion
more deeply and vividly with every passing year from this time
forward. We have had many political issues claiming the atten-
tion of the people within my own memory — issues growing out
of the Civil War, issues relating to the tariff and the currency —
issues which, if sifted to the bottom, have all had direct or indi-
rect relation to our industrial system. I do not care to get into
any controversy over any of these past or present political issues,
for such a controversy does not appear worth while. But I ven-
ture the opinion that many of these political issues of the past
and the present were and are entirely fictitious. They have been
and are evasions of the one broad question which is slowly aris-
ing before men's minds for solution. That one broad and in-
clusive question seems to me to be the one which I propose for
our discussion to-night. Let me put it this way : Is human gov-
ernment likely to continue plutocratic? or is it to become demo-
cratic?
Let me explain myself a little more clearly. In the first place,
I am not sure we have it in our power to say, off hand, what
sort of government we are to have. It will be clear to all who
hear me, I think, that some forms of government are no longer
possible, however much we might desire to reproduce them. I
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2 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
cannot conceive of any combination of circumstances which will
bring about an absolute monarchy in this country. The time is
hardly likely to come when we shall set up in America an actual
and avowed empire. Possibly we shall have for a time — perhaps
for a long time — an empire in everything but the name. That
may be the drift of things to-day. It may be a drift which noth-
ing can stem. It may be our destiny, as some of our alleged
statesmen are saying. But let us not deceive ourselves into
thinking that the accident of war is responsible in any impor-
tant sense for this drift. Let us understand clearly that if im-
perialism lies in store for this nation, the capture of Manila was
in no sense the cause of that policy. The seed of imperialism is
in that which has made it seem worth while to keep those islands.
But I do not believe we are going very far along the road
toward empire. I believe that none of the forms of human gov-
ernment which have so far existed can reappear, for the simple
reason that evolution and education, render such a thing impos-
sible. The blossom does not go back into the bud. The direc-
tion of evolution is from within outward. And while the life of
the material world around us seems to go on in cycles, every
twelve months repeating the same phenomena of seed-time and
harvest, there is no good reason for believing that the evolution
of the race proceeds in cycles. It may seem to return now and
then upon its path, but such is not the case. Evolution may
describe a spiral through the centuries; it does not describe a
circle.
In other words, I think it would be fair to say that the partic-
ular form of government under which society finds itself at any
given time is not the choice of the people of that time so much
as it is the logical result of the conditions which exist or have
prevailed. Will you not agree with me that probably no form
of government was ever deliberately chosen, out of hand, by a
people? I will not say that a form of government never will be
consciously chosen by a people, but I think it is historically true
that no form of government ever did result from deliberate
choice.
Let us see whether that statement seems to agree with the
facts. There have been many changes in the form of human eov-
ernment, but I cannot recall a single one which really marked a
very wide departure from that which preceded. We have in the
Bible, as you know, two accounts of the formation of the king-
dom of Israel. According to one account, a kingdom arose by
divine appointment — and was supposed to be a sort of miniature
on the earth of the government which Jehovah was supposed to
exercise in some other region. The king was the representative
of Jehovah. According to the other account, the people of Israel
selfishly wanted a king because other nations around them had
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PLUTOCRACY OR DEMOCRACY f 8
kings. They wanted to be in the fashion. Now, as a matter of
fact, we know perfectly well that neither of these stories is true.
They are both simply attempts made long afterward to account
for the origin of the institution of the kingdom. One of them —
that of the divine origin — was invented by some man who wished
to defend the institution when there seemed a danger that it
would be abolished. He appealed to the strongest motive men
can feel, namely, their superstitions. He declared that it was a
divinely appointed affair, and to abolish it or change it would
therefore be sacrilege. The other man, speaking from the point
of view of one who found the kingdom corrupt and evil, the bul-
wark of all sorts of injustice, sought to weaken its hold on the
minds of the people by declaring that it was a mistake to begin
with, that the very establishment of such an institution was an
act of direct disobedience to Jehovah, that it arose out of the
sinful wish to usurp an authority which belonged alone to God.
Whatever you may think about this interpretation of those old
stories, I am sure you will agree with me that the kingdom in
Israel grew out of the natural circumstances of the time and age.
Any one who is acquainted with the book of Judges knows that
Israel had a king long before the time of Saul or Samuel. A
kingdom was purely the product of the age. It was an evolution
from a more primitive tribal government, made necessary by the
warlike character of that time.
That same principle will apply to every government that has
existed and to every government that will exist. The great em-
pires of which we read in ancient history — the empires of the
Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans — were all
the perfectly natural product of the age. The greatest military
leader became the emperor, the ruler. In an age when ignorance
was the lot of the multitude, when the vast majority were slaves,
and when war for conquest was the normal state of things, an
empire was the only possible form of human government. Given
those circumstances, and the same thing would take place again.
The career of Napoleon illustrates the point. That he should
have achieved the ascendancy over the French nation which he
did, was largely due to the prevalence of ignorance and super-
stition in that country. That his career came so quickly to an
end was due simply to the fact that some things were wanting in
the equation which had been present in the time of Alexander
and Caesar. It is unthinkable that another Napoleon is a possi-
bility on this earth. We have seen within the past six months
how fleeting a thing military popularity is. Half the newspapers
of the country were urging Admiral Dewey's name for the presi-
dency, and it was thought that with him as a standard bearer
any party could sweep the country. To-day his name is not men-
tioned even for the presidency of a debating club, and nothing
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4 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
would be more certain than the utter defeat of any ticket having
his name at the head.
Governments are the product of existing or pre-existing con-
ditions. They are not the result of deliberate choice. You can-
not think of a democracy as possible in ancient Israel, or Greece,
or Rome, or Egypt, or Babylon. And yet thinkers were not want-
ing in Greece and Rome who could conceive of such a thing as
democracy. Plato dreamed of a republic. Aristotle shows a
knowledge of the fundamental principle of democracy. But no
such sort of government was possible of realization in their day.
One hundred and twenty-four years ago the Declaration of
Independence was given to the world, and not long afterward a
government was launched on these shores. But any one who
has taken the trouble to think about the matter knows that
scarcely any approach was made, in fact, toward a democracy.
The status of a citizen in the thirteen colonies after the signing
of that declaration, or even after the adoption of the constitution,
was not materially different from what it was before. In 1775
they were all subjects of the British crown. In 1776 they had
declared themselves independent of that authority. A few years
later they were citizens of the United States of America. Had
there been any great change in government? No. Suffrage was
more general, perhaps, than it had been before. But to all in-
tents and purposes the status of citizenship was unchanged. The
people of that day could not have established a really revolution-
ary government, if they had wanted to. And the majority of
them had no desire for such a thing. They could not have in-
augurated a democracy. They could not have told what a democ-
racy is — with the exception of Jefferson and a few others. Had
they all been as intelligent as the writer of the Declaration, it
would have made no difference. A whole nation of Thomas
Jeffersons could not have inaugurated democracy at that time.
The Declaration of Independence was a noble document, the
greatest ever penned under such circumstances. But its ideals
were as far from the intentions of the founders of this govern-
ment as were those of Plato's "Republic" or Bellamy's "Equal-
ity." This government was not even avowedly based upon that
Declaration. It was framed after the pattern of the English con-
stitution. Englishmen framed it, and they framed exactly such
a government as the Englishmen of that day might be expected
to frame. But it made little difference what they wrote in the
constitution. That did not determine and does not now the char-
acter of this government. Is it not true that the lawyers who
constitute the Supreme Court of the United States are prepared
to declare anything constitutional which the policy of the presi-
dent calls for? If this nation should care to assume all the forms
and adopt all the policies of an empire, eminent lawyers would
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PLUTOCRACY OR DEMOCRACY f 5
be found to declare that such a course was intended by the
framers of the constitution. It would be defended and justified
on constitutional grounds. There is no conceivable course hav-
ing the prospect of profit in it which lawyers cannot be found to
advocate.
The truth of the matter is, neither constitutions nor congresses
nor Supreme Courts have anything to do in determining the
nature of the government. That matter is decided in a totally
different way. We are living today as really under a plutocratic
form of government, as if our constitution expressly so declared.
Indeed, there is far more in the constitution to justify a plutocracy
than there is to justify democracy. The government of the
United States is plutocratic and has been so from its inception.
What is plutocracy? It is government of, for, and by the inter-
ests of private property. In other words, it is a government
which has its actual source in wealth, is determined in all its poli-
cies by the demands of wealth, and knows no other end than to
serve the interests of private profit. A democracy would be a
government having its origin in the whole people, determined
in all its policies by them acting with freedom and intelligence,
and having for its purpose the highest welfare of all the people.
It is a confusion of language to call the existing government
in this country a democracy, or even to say that a democracy is
possible under the present social and industrial system. We are
discovering— or we ought to be — that government is determined
absolutely and wholly by economic conditions. I venture to ex-
press the opinion that no more enlightening idea can gain access
to the minds of American citizens than that idea. I wish I could
impress upon the mind of every intelligent citizen of this count-
try the idea that human government is determined solely by eco-
nomic conditions, and that therefore the only possibility of se-
curing a change in the form of any government is by securing a
change in the economic system. You will bear me witness, I am
sure, that the drift of thought in this country is in that direction.
More and more are we coming to see that the only issues which
are worth considering in our political action are economic in
their nature. For only as we change the economic system can
we effect any change in government.
Let it be freely admitted that the ideal of democracy has some
hold of the popular mind in this country. It has found some
expression in the Declaration of Independence. But I venture
the opinion that it was but vaguely seen by even the framers of
that immortal document and is but vaguely seen by men today.
We have yet to adequately conceive democracy. We have yet to
get that idea clearly and firmly in our minds.
In order that I may the better convey to your minds what is
in my own, let me suggest three or four questions. You will
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6 INTERNATIONAL S0CIALIS1 REVIEW
want to know what the writer means by saying that the present
government is a plutocracy. Then we shall want to know
whether there are good reasons for desiring a change in the form
of our government. We shall want to know what the change
from plutocracy to democracy would mean. And, finally, if such
a change commends itself to our judgment, we shall want to con-
sider whether it is possible and how we may co-operate in bring-
ing it about.
First of all, what do I mean by saying that the government of
the United States is a plutocracy? I mean that the interests of
private property in the products of social effort are the supreme
concern of government, that for which it exists. I affirm that all
the institutions of government, all its departments and policies,
are determined in the last analysis by commercial considerations.
You will understand, I hope, that when I say that, I am making
no criticism on any man or set of men. I am simply trying to
state the facts. If I am wrong, I shall hope to be set right. I
mean to say that every official of the government is elected by
capitalistic interests and for the purpose of serving such inter-
ests. The Supreme Court of the United States has for its high-
est function, practically its sole function, the defense, protection,
and maintenance of the institution of private property. The Sen-
ate, as we all know, has become a millionaires' club and little
else. That is only a symptom of the disease. That fact respect-
ing the Senate is simply indicative of what is universally true.
Wealth is the dominating concern, the supreme power, and there-
fore we should expect that the Congress of the United States
would be officered by men representing wealth. We are not dis-
appointed in this expectation. We have representative govern-
ment, it is true. But it is representative of dollars rather than
men. We know perfectly well that no legislation can possibly
pass either house or gain the executive approval unless it is
plainly intended to serve the interests of wealth. The President
is chosen by the influence of money, and he is nothing more —
can be nothing more — than the agent of the interests of capital.
You do not need to have me tell you that the United States treas-
ury is at the disposal of corporate wealth. I do not think any
one would deny it. The whole banking system, the system of
currency and the financial policy of the government in the past
and in the present, no matter which party holds the offices, are
the creation and expression of plutocracy. ,
The same principle will be found to hold true through the
whole list of national and social institutions. Wealth has built
all our churches and controls them. It has erected our school
edifices and determines what shall be taught in them. It is the
one power that holds the world in its hand. If you can think of
any political policy that has been seriously broached by public
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PLUTOCRACY OR DEMOCRACY 7 7
men which does not express the will of money interests, you can
do better than I. Much has been said in criticism of Senator
Beveridge for his frank speech in the Senate relative to the Phil-
ippines. No criticism is justifiable. Indeed, he is the bravest
and frankest of the lot. No other member of the upper house
stands so squarely upon the fundamental principles of our gov-
ernment as he does. What are the vast armies and navies of the
present day? Nothing but police for the protection of the inter-
ests of wealth. What are our laws? Nothing* but the provisions
which plutocracy makes for its own preservation.
Let me make myself perfectly clear. I want you to understand
exactly what I mean, because it is of the first importance that
we grasp this fundamental truth. Government, let us under-
stand, is not determined by deliberate choice. Its form is not
decided in legislative halls — never has been. It is decided rather
by the market. It is decided by commercial and industrial inter-
ests. Plutocracy is not a national affair. It is international. It
is rapidly becoming the government of the world. It is that now,
so far as the dominant power is concerned. The interests of
wealth decide the final policies of all civilized nations. Of course,
there are nations, like Russia and China and Turkey, which have
not yet fully emerged from barbarism, and these nations are not
so completely plutocratic as Great Britain and the United States.
But today it is clear and tomorrow it will be clearer that the real
government in the British Empire and in the so-called American
Republic is one and the same thing, necessarily so. No bond
can unite two nations so powerfully and closelv as the interests
of wealth. We may cherish the notion that sentiment is the con-
trolling force, but we shall cherish a delusion. No interests of
any sort ever successfully compete with the interests of capi-
talism.
Let us now consider the question whether or not a plutocracy
is the most desirable form of government. The question may
best be considered in a two-fold form. ist. Has plutocracy per-
formed a great service to the world? 2nd. Is there good reason
for believing that it can no longer serve the best interests of the
race ? We shall not hesitate to answer the first of these questions
in the affirmative. Plutocracy is a part of human evolution and
as such it must have served a useful purpose. No form of gov-
ernment ever existed which did not serve a useful purpose. I
think we shall be able to see how great a debt we owe to pluto-
cracy. The human race has come a long way from the dawn
of creation. If we could see all the path it has followed, we
should see many things which would shock our sensibilities, but
they were all necessary and, measured by what they achieved in
human development, they were good. The physical develop-
ment of man is the sole product of ages of bloody struggle. The
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8 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
path of the race in its animal evolution has been a path of blood.
We have been for ages a race of fratricides, and we are by no
means yet out of the woods. Our old habits still cling to us.
The taste for blood, the passion to mangle and mutilate and kill,
is still in our veins. And we manage to keep up the reputation
of the family pretty well. But it has all been necessary to the
development of the physical organism. While we were animals
we had to act out the animal nature. Nothing else was possible
for us. We were not responsive to anything higher than the lusts
and passions of the animal.
It is by no means certain that we have arrived at the human
stage even yet. As a matter of fact, no other impulses or incen-
tives have been very powerful in shaping our action, than the
purely animal one of gain. We point to the fact that religion
has existed for all these long centuries, but we are obliged to note
the further fact that religion has been utterly impotent even to
modify the direction of our social and political life.
And when you think of the marvellous material results of the
plutocratic principle, which has had sway for more than a cen-
tury, you cannot question its utility. I think we must admit that
under the circumstances no other power could have accomplished
the material transformation that has taken place. And when we
reflect upon the further fact that plutocracy has so swiftly pre-
pared the way for some sort of universal government, we must
recognize its inestimable service.
But the real question is whether plutocracy has not fulfilled
its function, whether it does not stand now in the way of those
further steps in human progress which seem to be necessary. The
time often arrives in the evolution jof the race when a principle or
a force which has been in operation in a previous stag^e becomes
unnecessary. Evolution is marked by the constant leaving behind
of some things which once were useful. Many physical attributes
which were of value to man, say twenty-five or fifty thousands
years ago, have ceased to exist. The physical appearance of the
human race to-day differs widely from that which prevailed in
that far distant past. With the dawn of mind and its wonderful
development has resulted all that to-day distineuishes the man
from his animal companions. The emergence of reason ushered
the animal man into a totally new era of existence and brought
into play a new set of faculties. His life thenceforward became
as different from what it was before as day is unlike night. From
that moment the normal development of the physical nature real-
ly ceased, and the man of to-day has not a tithe of the physical
might which the man of fifty thousand years ago possessed. So
when the human race shall have entered into the new era of ethical
consciousness, it must be evident that some of the forces potent
before will cease to operate. It is my conviction that we have
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PLUTOCRACY OR DEMOCRACY f 9
entered or are entering upon a stage of the intellectual progress
of the race and are just on the threshold of an era of ethical con-
sciousness which make desirable and necessary the cessation of
some of the processes which have been operative hitherto. Are
we not beginning to feel that plutocracy is getting in the way of
that progress which seems now to be due? It was doubtless
necessary that the animal man should be physically powerful —
fleet of foot, strong of arm and iaw, clear and sure of vision — in
order to hold his own and survive in the animal struggle for ex-
istence. With the dawn of mind these qualities of physical
strength became unnecessary. Cunning, strategy, invention took
their place. Besides, the physical man had practically reached
perfection. It is impossible to suggest any improvements in the
physical organism of man. It was likewise necessary that the
dawning mind should be stimulated to its greatest possible
growth, as mind.
In like manner, it was necessary for the preparation of the
earth for man's higher uses that the struggle for material gain
should take place. But are we sure that this fierce struggle is
any longer necessary? Does it not seem as if something were
likely to take its place? Are there not interests at stake which
imperatively demand the operation of a totally different set of
impulses? I find myself obliged to answer these questions in
the affirmative. While plutocracy has been potent in the develop-
ment of the resources of the earth and in sharpening the human
mind in certain directions, it is evident that many lines of human
development are impossible under a plutocratic regime. I think
we are all agreed that scientific progress is a good thing. We
believe that the pursuit of the truth respecting the world we live
in is a very important factor in civilization. We shall agree that
whatever impedes or hampers the freest possible investigation of
any and all subjects of thought is hostile to the best interests of
the race. We shall also agree that we can discover the truth
only as we are perfectly free to investigate and to publish the re-
sults of our investigation. Freedom of thinking and freedom of
speaking are fundamental to the higher progress of man.
Right here is the severest indictment of plutocracy as a system
of government It is even now doing all in its power to dis-
courage the pursuit of truth, and to stifle freedom of thought and
speech. Do you doubt my word? Consider, then, the fact that
men are being dismissed from colleges and universities on every
side on the ground that their teachings are offensive to the men
whose wealth has built and endowed these institutions. It is a
well-understood principle in our universities that the economic
teaching shall be in harmony with the interests of capitalism. Our
faculties are in the absolute power of plutocracv. These institu-
tions cannot exist except by the will of plutocrats. Their sup-
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10 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
port comes entirely from that source. They surely cannot be
expected to cut themselves off from their own base of supply. I
submit that there may be important principles underlying society
which it is of the gravest consequence that men shall know. But
so long as the study of economic science is not perfectly free, so
long as a man endangers his livelihood by undertaking such
study, the system responsible for such a state of affairs is sub-
versive of man's rights. How is it with the churches? You do
not need to have me tell you that the man who dares to speak
fearlessly and openly the truth as he sees it will soon find him-
self without support. So long as a religious teacher keeps well
within the limits of a prescribed creed, he will not be disturbed,
for no religious creed was ever written or adopted which antag-
onized the interests of plutocracy. And you may be sure that
none will be by any denomination in Christendom. How is it
with the legal profession? An old lawyer living in New Bed-
ford, Mass., a graduate of Yale University and widely acquainted
in this country, told me last summer that if you want to know the
politics of the majority of the lawyers in any city or town, you
have simply to find out the politics of the wealthiest men or cor-
porations in that city or town. In other words, the whole duty of
a lawyer is simply to interpret the law agreeably with the interests
of plutocracy. A lawyer who declined to do that could not make
a living.
Now, it must be clear to you that such a state of things is
prejudicial to, indeed prohibitive of the moral and ethical progress
of mankind. Suppose a professor of geology were to write a
book and announce on its first page that he had undertaken an
investigation of the story of the earth's buried life with the dis-
tinct purpose of making all the facts fit into the theory of a
miraculous creation six thousand years ago. How many people
would read any farther than that announcement ? Of how much
use would that kind of investigation be to human knowledge?
Suppose that every teacher of political economy were honest and
should declare to his pupils: "The things which I propose to
teach in my department are such as meet the cordial approval of
the men who established and are supporting this institution."
How long would such a man find people foolish enough to attend
his lectures? Suppose every minister were equallv honest and
were to announce at the beginning of every sermon: "I have
written this sermon with the distinct idea of not offending or
alienating the men whose money is necessary to the maintenance
of this church." How long would anybody attend such a church?
The truth is, plutocracy is making us a race of cowards and
hypocrites and liars. I do not say that every teacher consciously
caters to wealth. I do not say that all preachers shape their
teaching with a view to retaining the financial support of the
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PLUTOCRACY OR DEMOCRACY 9 11
rich. But I do say that freedom of thinking and speaking is im-
possible for any man who repudiates orthodoxy either in social
science or religion and holds himself true to the new facts, and
truths which are becoming visible, except at the loss of a living.
That is not a personal charge. It is simply a statement of fact.
And without censuring any individual, I submit that a condition
of things under which that is true is insufferable. I submit that
the power to regulate or determine what men shall think or say,
whether in the class room or the pulpit or the platform, is a power
which cannot be entrusted to any group of men. It is an indica-
tion that the human race has arrived at a new stage of its evolu-
tion and that the dominant forces of the past must be dispensed
with; for the future unfolding demands the operation of other
forces and the dominance of other principles.
Whatever stands in the way of the natural evolution of the race
will be swept away. There can be no doubt about that. The out-
grown garment is laid aside. The human body at maturity can-
not be confined within the same clothing which answered for its
infancy. The same is true of the race. It is all the while growing
toward its maturity, and it becomes necessary at various stages
to lay aside some things which answered a useful purpose at an
earlier period.
I have intimated that we seem to be just now oji the threshold
of an era to be marked by growing ethical consciousness on the
part of humanity. I say "on the threshold'' of such an era, be-
cause an impartial study of history must reveal the fact that
ethics has had little to do hitherto with the life of man on the
earth. Ethics finds no place and never has found place in the
industrial or political life of the world. That has been and is to-
day distinctly unethical. Probably a few cases can be cited in
political life where ethics seems to be a factor, but such cases are
rare and inconclusive. One would suppose that if ethics found ex-
pression anywhere, it would be in religion. What are the facts?
I freely admit that ethical consciousness has frequently appeared
in individuals, as was true of the Hebrew prophets, of Jesus, of
Buddha, and of other religious leaders. But I can think of no
formulated religion which makes room for one single ethical ele-
ment. The religion of the Hebrews was distinctly unethical, so
far as their conceptions of Jehovah were concerned. The religious
institution does not credit the Supreme Being with one ethical at-
tribute. He was the Omniscient and the Omnipotent — never the
Self-forgetting One. Ethical ideals constitute the richest part of
the teaching of Jesus, but if we have a correct report of his
words, he certainly cherished conceptions of God which are un-
ethical. He seems to imply that God is governed only by his
own will, that he can do as he chooses and no one has a right
to call in question the right of it. But whatever is true of the
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12 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
teachings of Jesus, I defy any one to nut his finger upon an
ethical element in the theology of Christendom. It is a scheme
based upon an unthinkable philosophy which admits of no
ethical principles.
And yet, in the course of our evolution, it seems to me that
the human race is already in the dawning twilight of an ethical
age. Never before has the word "brotherhood" taken such a
powerful hold on men's minds as now. The world-wide social
movement of our time is a fraternal movement. Men speaking
different languages and dwelling at antipodes are calling one an-
other "comrade." The best religious life of the world is feeling
the imperative necessity of brotherhood. And yet plutocracy
stands squarely across the path to brotherhood. It sets men over
against each other in battle array. It creates a line of social cleav-
age, with a master class on one side and a slave class on the other.
No man can live under the plutocratic regime without violating
brotherhood every day he lives. He cannot attempt to make the
most of his life without making himself the enemy of his fellows.
He cannot fulfill his natural ambition except at the cost of other
men's lives. He cannot rise in the world except by standing upon
a wriggling pyramid of human bodies. Plutocracy ordains that
our life shall be one long prostitution. It places the weak at the
mercy of the strong. It requires a deference to certain types of
men which is in itself degrading and corrupting. It places power
in the hands of those least fitted to wield it. It crowns Judas
and crucifies Jesus. It puts a premium upon falsehood and
makes hypocrisy the price of success. It legalizes robbery, justifies
murder, and is the prolific mother of crime. Indeed, it is a con-
spiracy against all moral and intellectual progress. For these
and for other reasons, it seems to me that a change in our sys-
tem of government is not only desirable, but inevitable.
Now, what would the change from plutocracy to democracy
mean ? And how, if at all, may it be brought about ? If there is
any truth in what I have been saying up to this point, this ought
to be the uppermost question in the minds of our people in all
their political and social action. No political leader is trustworthy
who does not betray a firm grasp on this question. Here is the
political problem of the twentieth century, a problem which that
century must bring to solution. I believe we shall realize democ-
racy in the twentieth century. I do not say that democracy is
final. Indeed, I am confident that it is not. But I feel sure that
it is the next step. We have passed through several forms of
government. First, there was no government — anarchy. Then
came various forms of monarchy — the rule of one. Then came
oligarchy — the rule of a few. And then, with the commercial
and industrial age, came plutocracy, which flourishes to-day — the
rule of the dollar. The next step must be democracy — the rule
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PLUTOCRACY OR DEMOCRACY 7 13
of the people conscious of themselves and of their higher right
and destiny. But beyond democracy lies autarchy — the self-gov-
ernment of each individual — the absence of formal government —
the era of absolute freedom — the dream of the individualist. That
time lies very far away in the future, a long way farther than
many seem to think. For it is simply unthinkable until after a
long period of democracy shall have fitted the race to do without
formal government. It is the fatal weakness of all individualists
that they seem to want to avoid democracy. They want to jump
clear across the gap which that form of government is meant to
fill. Indeed, there are several classes of individualists, and they
are all a unit in not wanting to give democracy a chance. They
say: "We shall lose our freedom if you inaugurate a government
in which all the people have to be considered." Individualists
have no faith in the people. Moreover, they fail to take into ac-
count the fact that the only chance people have of becoming fit
for ideal self-government is by the experience of democracy.
That a democratic government would make mistakes is doubtless
true, but the mistakes of democracy are of more value than the
successes of plutocracy. And there is no sign of fitness for the era
of individualism unless and until there is manifest a determination
to secure for the whole people by united collective action the
rights and privileges of the weakest and lowest. The verv desire
for an individualistic regime at once is in itself evidence of the
absence of fitness for such a regime.
Now, the change from plutocratic to democratic government
will mean, in my judgment, a complete and radical revolution.
I can conceive of no change more radical than that would be.
Plutocracy and democracy can no more mix than oil and water.
They have nothing in common. The complete triumph of plutoc-
racy would mean the obliteration of democracy, and vice versa.
The change to democracy involves the greatest moral and ethical
change that is conceivable. Under a democracy the interests of
wealth cannot be considered. The pursuit of profit, which is the
very soul of our present system, will not exist — cannot exist in a
democracy. Under the latter the interests of men will be su-
preme. Under the former the interests of the dollar everywhere
and always outweigh those of the man. Under a democracy ev-
erything would be changed. Strikingly true would that be in the
sphere of education. Plutocracy has ordained that education
shall proceed from the motive of fitting the individual to gain a
living, to accumulate and manage private property. Practically
everything is made to bend to that purpose. By common consent,
rea3ing, writing and arithmetic are now regarded as the funda-
mentals of an education. To be sure, we are trying to break
away from that idea, but we do not succeed, and we can never
hope to succeed so long as we maintain a system of things under
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14 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
which obviously those three subjects are of greatest importance.
At present these are indispensable to the pursuit of private
wealth. No man can hope to succeed in the commercial world —
in a plutocracy — unless he can count money, compute interest,
reckon profit and loss, read the market quotations, and write his
name on checks and other commercial documents. Under a de-
mocracy for the first time in human history education will be
free to follow the natural lines which the real needs of men would
dictate. The man will be the chief concern, and therefore he will
not be a money counter nor a money getter. That will no longer
be an aim of life. It will be possible then for men to live a true
and ennobling life. Those words of the immortal declaration
will then have some meaning: "All men are created free and
equal and have certain inalienable rights, among which are life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Neither life, nor liberty,
nor the pursuit of happiness has any real meaning under a plu-
tocratic government.
I fancy the objection will be raised that in a democracy you
may have any sort of conditions that the people by majority vote
shall prescribe. If it is the will of the people that the present sys-
tem of education continue, such will be the law. If it is their
will to perpetuate the present industrial system, that system will
go on. There may be people who are still laboring under the
delusion that we have democracy to-day. In answer to these
and other objections I would simply say that democracy can be
inaugurated only by a revolution in the character of our economic
system. No body of people anywhere can introduce democracy
by passing a resolution to that effect. A democracy is the joint
product of economic and political evolution. Political action can-
not produce democracy until the industrial evolution is finished.
And the transition cannot finally be made except by the utter
destruction of the profit system. Democracy is a matter of edu-
cation. No people is capable of ushering it in until the necessary
process of enlightenment has been undergone. Democracy and
special privilege, or, in other words, the profit system cannot co-
exist, no matter what a nation's action might be. They are mu-
tually exclusive. So long as it is possible for one man to exploit
his fellows, exploitation will go on. Environment is the one fac-
tor which men have the power to determine. With the dawn of
reason, man began the process of changing his environment.
The possession of that power has been one of the important and
determining factors in his career. A vegetable has no power to
change its environment, and so no great change in a vegetable
is possible — no change at all except by the aid of man. Animals
have some power to change their environment, and therefore
greater changes in their structure and development have been
possible. Man alone has practically unlimited power to change
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PLUT0CR4CY OR DEMOCRACY f 15
his environment, especially the collective man. To-day he is be-
ginning to see that he has the power to change his social and
political environment. That was the one thing which the thirteen
colonies accomplished. They did not establish democracy, but
they put themselves within a somewhat different environment
from what they had known before. It is impossible to estimate
the value of that act. And yet we ought not to lose sight of
the fact that other forces were potent in it. In England it would
have been impossible. So would it have been anywhere in Eu-
rope. It would have been impossible a hundred years earlier
even on this continent. But the time was ripe for it then, and its
influence upon the past centurv has been great. Then we were
caught in the sweep of the great industrial era and carried along
into the plutocratic state. But the power has been developing
which will enable us soon to determine our industrial and social
environment. How are we to take that step? It is here that we
differ among ourselves. Some men believe that we shall do so
by trying to get the single tax adopted as the law of the land.
Plausible arguments are advanced in support of that belief. The
one supreme defect in that program, to my mind, is that it does
not belong in the line of economic evolution. It does not seem
to me to be adequate to the situation. I cannot devote sufficient
time to stating all the difficulties which that scheme suggests to
me, but I am thoroughly convinced that it is not the road that
humanity will take out of the present iniquitous system. I can
understand perfectly well that the land is the source of all the
material out of which our industrial life is fed and sustained. I
can understand how, if the land could become the possession of
the nation, monopoly would cease. I can see all that. But I
think I can see a lot more. I cannot agree with my sirfgle tax
friends that what we most need is the abolition of all monopoly.
I do not believe we are ready or shall be ready for a long time
for the individual freedom for which we all hope. I believe that
this proposition, when it is sifted down to the bottom, will be
seen to be anti-social. That is to say, it fails to take note of the
fact that humanity is the unit. The individual is not the unit. I
insist that it is the task of society to fit large portions of its mem-
bership to survive. I insist that there is no social or political sal-
vation for the individual unless the salvation of the mass is se-
cured. I believe that the whole evolution of the race points to
that as the legitimate end to be aimed at. We are brothers. We
are not strangers, and we cannot be, however much we may wish
to be. We cannot go apart by ourselves and erect our little per-
sonal paradise. Whatever paradise is possible for anv soul lies
in the establishment of a paradise for the whole family.
There are other people who think we are to accomplish the
transition to democracy by transforming the democratic party. I
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16 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
am free to say that if that party could be transformed and sat-
urated with the social spirit, could become conscious of the end
to be achieved, that surely would prove the wisest step to take.
The important thing to be kept in view, it seems to me, is that
nothing can make this transition save that which shall completely
change the economic system. We cannot have democracv so
long as we retain any vestige of plutocracy. For myself, I be-
lieve there must be united political action. Plutocracy, though
the very opposite of democracy, has served a useful purpose in
preparing the way. It has wiped out national lines. It has be-
come international. Democracy must also be international. We
cannot have democracy in spots. It must be the dominant sys-
tem of the world. And it can become so only as it rests upon an
economic basis which knows no national lines. When you deal
with economics you touch the universal life, you come face to face
with universal interests. The industrial evolution has been as
wide as civilization. In the path of that evolution lies democracy,
and nowhere else. And therein lies the wisdom and strength of
the Socialist movement. It is the only political movement to-day
that is international, the only one that binds together into one
the people of every race and clime for industrial and political
emancipation. Is it not a fact that the only political party in Eu-
rope that aims at democracy is the Social Democratic Party?
the party of Socialism? Nay, is there any other party in any
country on the face of the earth which either believes in or is
actually working for democracy? If there is, I have never heard
of it. It is the only movement I know anything about which
really believes in democracy, which has any real faith in the oeo-
ple, which combines sense and sympathy in such proportions as
to be effective to that end. I cannot therefore resist the convic-
tion that only through a Socialist political movement in this
country, co-operant with the world-wide movement, can we hope
to gain the ends of our desire and solve the problem of the
twentieth century. Our choice must be between plutocracv and
socialism.
William T. Brown.
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ENGLAND AND INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM.
Social Democrats of all countries will gladly welcome the estab-
lishment in the United States of an International Socialist Re-
view specially designed to keep up an intellectual intercourse
between the revolutionary Socialists of the new world and the
old. I say "revolutionary Socialists" deliberately, because, al-
though I understand the new periodical is to open its pages to all
schools of Socialist thought, it is quite certain that they, in
America as elsewhere, must eventually control the whole. The
hatred and fear of the word revolution is always to me the evi-
dence of a weak mind. Evolution in all departments of nature
inevitably leads to revolution — often in a cataclysmal shape — and
revolution does but confirm and realize the results of evolu-
tion. Whether this fresh period of growth, and of renewed evo-
lution in its turn, is attained peaceably or forcibly at the last
matters no doubt a good deal to the men of the time when the
revolution occurs; but it concerns future generations very little
indeed; and "the sanctity of human life/* about which so much
nonsense is talked by bourgeois sentimentalists, counts for noth-
ing to those who recognize that the faculties and lives of
millions of human beings are being relentlessly crushed out un-
der the capitalist system of our day. For myself, then, I am a
revolutionary Social-Democrat and I write as such to the In-
ternational Socialist Review. Nothing short of the complete con-
trol of all the ever-increasing powers of man over nature by the
whole people in co-operative accord, bound together by common
consent in national and international' solidarity, can finally re-
lieve humanity from the last and in some ways the worst form of
slavery. The wage-system is doomed as chattel slavery and serf-
dom were doomed. The capitalist class which, with its hangers-
on, deems itself to be everything today, will be absorbed in the
collective organization of fully-developed and highly educated
democracy tomorrow. Nowhere is this more apparent than' in
the great Republic of the United States. Your Rockefellers and
Vanderbilts, and Pierpont Morgans, who imagine themselves to
be men of genius and financiers of wisdom, are nothing more
than the commonplace and rather unseemly tools which the un-
conscious social development of mankind is using in order to
prepare through their trusts and combines and monopolies the
glorious co-operative commonwealth for which we as Socialists
are consciously making ready. In this new stage of development
America manifestly leads the world. It is high time that the
17
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18 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
workers of the United States should understand the tremendous
responsibility which thus lies upon their shoulders.
Standing as we do between two great centuries in the history
of the race, the century of capitalism and the century of socialism,
— the day before us and the night behind — it is essential that
Social-Democrats in their respective countries should keep one
another thoroughly well informed as to the progress of the cause.
Sooner or later we must all act together if we are to take full ad-
vantage of the developments going on around us in order to
avoid the dangers that might follow upon a general attempt at re-
construction without sufficient knowledge and full international
agreement. So closely bound together are modern industrial com-
munities that what seriously affects one cannot fail to influence
the others — as international crises have shown us time after time.
In the same way, therefore, that it is of the greatest importance
to English Social-Democrats to know so far as it can be known,
the truth about the industrial and social development of the
United States, it is of no less significance to Americans to have
correct infortnation in regard to what is occurring here. At-
tempts to make out that either society is more advanced towards
the next great stage in human evolution than it really is can only
do harm and tend to arrest intelligent progress.
Now there has been a tendency of late for Americans who have
come to England in order to study our social and economic condi-
tions to exaggerate absurdly the work which has been done and to
advance the point at which we have arrived. This arises from the
fact that most of the visitors from the other side of the Atlantic
have been "put through," to use an Americanism, by the Fabian
Society. That collection of middle-class gentlemen and ladies
has learnt that self-advertisement is far more useful than first-
rate ability under existing conditions and they lose no oppor-
tunity of endeavoring to prove to visitors to our shores that they
are controlling the issues in this England of ours with great capa-
city to nice bourgeois-Socialist ends. They are sreat on gas and
water. Tramways and model lodging-houses move their very souls.
The trade union and the co-operative store awaken their intelli-
gence to a sempiternal contemplation of economic harmonies. The
etherealization of the town council and the apotheosis of the
municipality constitute their highest conception of the Socialist
state. If Bastiat could be resuscitated in a municipal waistcoat
and Schulze-Delitzsch could revisit the glimpses of the moon girt
with a lord mayor's chain of office, you would have at once two
of the ablest and most influential members of the Fabian Society.
Now so long as these worthies kept their half-baked rubbish for
home consumption no great harm was done, but when it is ex-
ported to America as genuine then some mischief follows. If a
few eccentrics choose to make twelve o'clock at eleven the only
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
ENGLAND AND INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM 19
result is they get their midday meal half cooked; but there is no
reason that I know of why they should be allowed to palm off
this patent formula for procuring indigestion on credulous Amer-
icans. It is usually taken for granted that there is quite enough
home-grown dyspepsia in the United States.
Now the truth is that in spite of the influence of collectivism
on Municipal Councils, School Boards, County and District
Councils and Poor Law Guardians, which after all is mainly due
to the work of Social Democrats, the condition of the mass of the
people is in many respects very bad. In fact, it is doubtful
whether in the great cities of any other civilized country the bulk
of the population is so wretchedly housed and the children of the
poor so shamefully neglected as they are in the great cities of
Great Britain. Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bir-
mingham, Bradford, etc., are in these respects little, if at all, bet-
ter than the metropolis. What is more, no great improvement
can be made until the whole problem is dealt with from the na-
tional point of view by the agency of a really democratic State or
rather Commonwealth. And of any attempt being seriously made
in this way, there is at present no sign whatever. In like manner
the question of the unemployed is persistently pushed aside to a
more convenient season, so that when a period of depression
comes there is no effective machinery whatever for dealing with
the mass of workers who are thrown into hopeless poverty by no
fault whatever of their own. Owing to these and other causes
vast sections of our city inhabitants are undergoing steady phy-
sical deterioration ; to such an extent, indeed, is this the case that
it is not too much to say that the majority of the adult males are
unfit for military service. In some of the districts of the North,
where volunteering and recruiting have been going on during
this shameful war in South Africa, as many as seventy-five per
cent of those coming forward have been rejected as physically
incapable. When to all this we add the testimony of the certi-
fying surgeons in our manufacturing centres that the children
exhibit less and less vigor and we know from middle-class statis-
tics that a very large proportion of those who attend the Board
Schools are insufficiently fed, it is scarcely necessary to cite
further evidence in order to prove that mere municipalism and
localism, however useful in some directions, has wholly failed to
solve the pressing social problems of our modern capitalist. In
Roubaix, Lille, and other French towns where the citizens have
much greater power and use it with far greater effect than in any
of our English cities, our French comrades of the Parti Ouvrier
are under no delusions whatever as to the capacity and the limi-
tations of mere municipalism.
Let it rather be frankly admitted that, notwithstanding the as-
siduous propaganda of the Social-Democratic Federation for the
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20 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
past twenty years and of other Socialist organizations more re-
cently, England lags behind the rest of Europe in acceptance
of Socialist doctrines as well as in some respects even in the
practical application of Socialistic palliatives. That said we may
reasonably look into the causes which head back progress in
this densely-peopled and capitalist-dominated island. I can do
no more in this article than give a summary of the conditions
which, in my opinion, tell against the spread of Socialism in
Great Britain and account for the backwardness of our party
here.
i. The ignorance and almost worse than the ignorance, the
belated instruction of the mass of the people. They are not
trained, either mentally or physically, in any systematic way.
Consequently, their habitual reading is of the most snippety char-
acter and largely made up of silly little stories.
2. The low standard of life of a large proportion of the work-
ing classes. Bad air, bad food, bad clothes, bad surroundings
enfeeble intelligence and destroy initiative.
3. Fairly good wages and better conditions of life for the
higher grade of artisans, thus separating them from their fel-
lows living on a lower plane and rendering class combination
difficult.
4. The Trade Unions tend in the same direction, being in
England almost exclusively an aristocracy of labor. The Amal-
gamated Society of Engineers does not allow engineers' laborers
who attend upon the skilled men to join the Society on any con-
sideration I believe.
5. The heavy emigration and colonization of the past half-
century have taken off, as they did in the case of Spain, the most
adventurous and determined of the workers, leaving only the less
energetic behind to propagate the race.
6. The complementary side to this: the return of wealthy
men who have made their fortunes over sea to settle in England,
and especially in London.
7. These millionaires are all conservative in the widest sense,
and they use their wealth and influence, naturally enough,
against Social-Democracy.
8. The growth of the huge parasitic class of children of the
people, domestic servants, purveyors of luxuries, semi-artists and
the like who, being dependent on their rich employers, adopt
their opinions.
9. The pauper class of our great cities already referred to,
called by the Germans "lumpen-proleteriat," which is frankly re-
actionary. During the outburst of piratical jingoism from which
we have been suffering, the poorest quarters were most be-
flagged.
10. Liberty. Everybody is personally free. The police are
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ENGLAND AND INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM 81
very fairly impartial to protect all sorts and conditions of men
and women indifferently. What more do you want than freedom
to struggle and starve?
ii. Patriotism. We have had about a thousand years of suc-
cessful manslaughter and piracy continuously, conquering all
but men of our own race. "Rule Britannia," "God Save the
Queen/' "There's a Land that Bears a Well-known Name," etc.,
etc. All this balderdash is absorbed and given out in large doses
especially among the poor and ignorant.
12. Religion. The Church has still an excellent innings and
uses the great Catholic cathedrals, which it has "conveyed,"
wholly in the interests of the possessing classes. What the
Anglicans fail to accomplish in this direction the non-conformists
fully achieve. The God of England is always the God of the
rich.
13. Charity. This covers and is intended to cover a multitude
of sins. It is twice cursed. It curses him who gives and him
who takes. But helps to maintain class domination comfortably.
14. Absence of conscription. The freedom from this blood-
tax, though beneficial from many points of view, helps to keep
the people contented.
15. The national instinct for compromise due to our long
parliamentary and constitutional history.
16. Our antiquated political arrangements. Our political
forms are at least a hundred years behind our economic devel-
opment. We have neither universal suffrage, one man one vote,
second ballot, payment of election expenses and of members,
nor any other complete democratic method of election.
17. Our wealthy political men deliberately debauch the poorer
voters in the constituencies by indirect but continuous bribery,
especially in hard times.
18. The English aristocracy are extremely dexterous and
painstaking. They work together in the interests of their order
The poor English "love a lord/'
19. There is in England to a larger extent than in any other
country in the world a great buffer class, if so I may call it,
whose members and their forbears have never from generation to
generation taken part in direct capitalist exploitation at home.
They have been landowners, professional men, officials, slave-
owners, merchants, "squatters," etc. But they have never been
actual wage-slave-drivers. Hence they have no active sympathy
with the capitalists as a class and modify the direct class antag-
onism and class war.
20. Drink, betting, love of games. These are terrible agents
of the dominant minority, which the majority use against them-
selves.
21. Bourgeois Socialism. The Fabian Society, and to a less
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82 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
degree the Independent Labor Party, have done much to per-
suade such workers as they could get at that we Social-Demo-
crats [Socialists of the Marx school], though we constitute by
far the strongest single political party in Europe, don't know
what we are about. Mischievous work of this sort acting upon
ignorance and apathy is even more injurious than downright
opposition.
Now all who read carefully through that summary and take
the trouble to reflect upon its various points will form a reason-
able idea of the difficulties which we English Social-Democrats
have to encounter and overcome. These difficulties are none
the less serious because they do not take the shape of violent*
antagonism. Apathy and half-hearted agreement are harder to
fight against, in a sense, than vigorous antagonism. Neverthe-
less,thorough-going scientific Socialism is making way. Our ideas
and even our own phrases have made their way into the whole
of the literature of the country. In every department of political
and social advance Social-Democrats keep the initiative, and the
Trade Unions, reactionary as they still are in many respects, are
increasingly ready to follow our lead. In fact, as I have often
said, Socialism in England is like a vessel filled with fluid in a
laboratory. It is fluid as we look at it; but give it a rough jog
and crystallization sets in almost immediately. That necessary
shock may come at any moment. The awful catastrophe in Brit-
ish India, where we are deliberately starving millions of people
to death while drawing 80,000,000 of dollars in gold from the
famine-stricken country this very year on Government account
alone; the condition of permanent unrest and disaffection which
we have carefully created at enormous cost in Africa; the grow-
ing antagonism to Russia in China and to France in the basin of
the Mediterranean; the certainty of a great industrial crisis at
home at the end of this period of "boom" — any one of these
causes, or all of them together, may precipitate the realization of
the coming period. At any rate, we are working vigorouslv on,
and I have no doubt that in the twentieth century England will
do her share to bring about the great Industrial Co-operative
Commonwealth.
H. M. Hyndman.
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THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN FRANCE AND THE
MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS.
For the last three months the political life of the Socialist party
has been absorbed by the municipal campaign which has just
ended with the election of mayors throughout the French mu-
nicipalities. I must first inform our American comrades briefly
regarding the electoral system enjoyed by the cities and villages
of France. To begin with, Paris must be distinguished from the
rest of the country. The capital of the French republic, on ac-
count of its revolutionary record and especially the recent events
of the commune, has been presented by our rulers with a special
government. In all other towns, the largest and the smallest
alike, the municipal council, chosen by universal suffrage, selects
its mayor, who administers under its control, and directs the
police. The city of Paris on the other hand does indeed elect
municipal councilmen, but these are not empowered to choose
a mayor, and the police is placed under the orders of the pre-
fect of police, an officer named by the central government. More*
over, a part of the ordinary duties of a mayor is at Paris
entrusted to a government official, the prefect of the Seine.
While speaking of the difference between the municipal sys-
tem of Paris and of the provinces, I should add that while
most of the municipal councils in the provinces are elected on a
general ticket for the whole city, Paris, on the contrary, is divided
into eighty very unequal districts, each of which chooses a mu-
nicipal councilman. The rich districts of the center and the west
with an average population of fifteen to twenty thousand thus
have a representation equal to that of the vast swarms of the
east, the north and the southeast, like "La Riquette," "Clignan-
court/' "Belleville" or "La Gare," where the population reaches
seventy, eighty or a hundred thousand.
In a very interesting article which Comrade A. M. Simons
wrote for the new French Socialist review, "La Movement So-
cialists/' he explains very clearly that in America you do not
have to deal with those survivals of feudal, aristocratic and cleri-
cal reactionaries against which the organized proletariat must di-
rect its best efforts in France, Germanv and Italy. It is in a bit-
ter struggle against this reaction, which in France is called "Na-
tionalism/' that at the present hour the French militant Socialists
are obliged to direct their efforts. In truth you have even in
America, as well as in England, an analogous movement, namely,
imperialism. But your Anglo-Saxon imperialism, while it may
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24 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
imply militarism and chauvinism, seems to me more evidently
economic at its root, while it does not like the French national-
ism involve a medieval anti-semitism.
Nevertheless I would not leave the American comrades to
suppose that French nationalism is at bottom anything but a
mighty effort against socialism and the proletarian revolution.
It is a movement which has succeeded in uniting all the forces
of the large and the smaller bourgeois, the landed aristocracy
and the army, with the braggart demagogues who deceive the
unhappy, stupid and ferocious mob into the belief that the na-
tionalist movement will bring remedies for their economic
troubles.
Opposed to this nationalist party, the different factions of the
bourgeois democracy cut a sorry figure. The republicans whom
we call opportunists, and who represent bourgeois liberalism,
have certainly passed over for the most part to the nationalist
reaction, their chief, M. Meline, at their head. The radicals, who
for a long time assumed the direction of the liberal element, and
whose tendencies correspond exactly with those of the American
Democrats and Populists, have offered a very ineffective resist-
ance to the assault of the nationalists. It is moreover quite evi-
dent that demoralization and discouragement reign and will
reign more and ever more in the radical camp. Nationalism is
in great part, from the economic point of view, not only the
party of the upper-class reactionary bourgeoisie, but also the
party of the small bourgeoisie, of the little traders and of all that
intermediate class from which radicalism formerly drew its
strength. So today it finds itself deprived of the greater part of
its little bourgeois following, while socialism is taking away daily
what strength had remained to it among the workingmen.
Under these conditions the results of the municipal elections
in Paris May 6th and 13th are not surprising. Nationalism such
as we have described it is especially strong at Paris, where the re-
action finds in the petty bourgeois demagogy the element re-
quired to enable it to present itself under a new mask. In the
provinces socialism has only had to struggle against the bour-
geois reaction properly so-called.
The Socialist party, perhaps for the first time, offered itself
united, at least as far as voting is concerned, to the suffrages of
the whole people. With some rare exceptions there was in each
district of Paris only one Socialist candidate, and in each of the
other cities of France only one Socialist ticket.
At Paris, among all the parties which struggled against nation-
alism, the Socialist was the only one which sustained no losses;
on the contrary it increased the total of its votes. Of twenty out-
going Socialist municipal councilmen, sixteen were re-elected
and four defeated. But on the other hand four seats were gained
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THE FRENCH ELECTIONS 85
by Comrades Ranvier, Weber, Poiry and Paris. Of the four
newly elected, three are manual laborers; on the contrary, of the
four Socialists who were defeated only one was a laborer and
represented a laborers' district, the other three were professional
men and represented middle-class districts. As to the figures
of the election, the Socialist party had 98,000 votes at Paris in
1896, while in 1900 they had 126,000.
All the bourgeois democratic parties have at Paris been
crushed by nationalism. In the old municipal council there were
30 radicals, twenty Socialists, eighteen republican-opportunists
and twenty-two reactionaries and nationalists. In the new one
there are forty-four nationalists and reactionaries, twenty Social-
ists, fourteen radicals and two opportunists.
It is therefore the Socialist party which will be at Paris the only
vigorous and solid defender of republican liberties, as well as the
only representative of the interests of the working class.
But I hasten to inform the Socialist comrades of the United
States of the results of the municipal elections in the provinces —
altogether remarkable from a Socialistic point of view. Since
the election of 1896 the Socialist party has controlled the mu-
nicipal governments of a certain number of cities, the most im-
portant of which were Marseilles, Lille, Roubaix, Dijon, Mont-
lu<;on and Ivry. Against the Socialist municipalities a terrible
assault has been made by the capitalistic bourgeoisie. Let us
see what has been the result. ,
At Marseilles our valiant friend, Dr. Plaissieres, has carried
off the victory in spite of the coalition of all the bourgeois parties
against him. Likewise at Lille the Socialists are victorious with
Gustave Delory, a weaver, as also at Roubaix, Montlu<;on and
Ivry. Only at Dijon our friends have been defeated, but there in
1896 their victory was a surprise and came about from there being
four bourgeois tickets in the field, which this year were fused
against the Socialist ticket.
But brilliant victories and the capture of important cities are
still to relate. Our friend, Dr. Augagneur, professor in the Uni-
versity of Lyons, one of the most learned physiologists of
Europe, leads the victorious ticket of the Socialist party at Lyons,
the second city of France, where thirty-three Socialists and radi-
cals have been elected as against twentv-three reactionaries. The
majority of the municipal council of Lyons is in the hands of our
party, and Angagneur has been elected mayor of Lyons.
At St. Etienne, a manufacturing city of more than 150,000
population, the Socialist party is victorious as a result of the
great strike of last winter, which the Socialist party conducted
the striking workers to a victory, especial credit being due to the
admirable work of Comrade Jaures. At St. Quentin, at Bourges,
at Limoges and at Montceau-les-Mines the Socialist party has
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26 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
magnificent majorities, and it captured the administration in nu-
merous smaller cities where today it is in full control.
Let me add finally that in a great number of cities the Social-
ist party has been beaten but has polled an immense number of
votes. For example, at Vroyes it came out with 3,600 votes
against 3,600 for the bourgeois ticket, with heavy gains at Toulon,
Grenoble, Calais, Puteaux, St. Denis, Creussot, Sevaillais-Clichy
and St. Owen.
Summing up, we may say that the municipal elections of May,
1900, have brought magnificent successes to the international
Socialist party in all France, and that in Paris the Socialist party
is today the only one capable of defending the interests of modern
civilization against the barbarities of nationalism.
Jean Longuet.
Paris, May 30, 1900.
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THE LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS IN BELGIUM.
Before examining into the results of the electoral struggle
which has just taken place, it is necessary to give a brief ex-
planation of the conditions attending it. Since 1893 we have a
new electoral law which establishes universal suffrage, but only
in the sense that it accords at least one vote to every individual
over twenty-five years of age. But this universal suffrage is
vitiated by the provision that certain citizens, by reason of posi-
tion or of property, have two or three votes. It is easily under-
stood that this system is made to favor the conservative parties.
Up to this time the law established "election by majority";
this year, for the first time, a new law establishing "proportional
representation" went into effect, and on this occasion the parlia-
ment had been dissolved and the elections extended over the
entire country.
Since 1884, following the almost total exclusion of the liberals,
the catholic (clerical ultramontane) government had a majority
of 72, votes out of a total of 152 seats in parliament. The liberals
had 12 seats and the socialists 28. The new chamber is com-
posed of 85 clericals, 1 Christian democrat, 35 liberals (moderate
and progressive), and 33 socialists. The votes were divided as
follows: Catholics (clericals), 1,007,166; Christian democrats,
55*ooo; liberals (of all shades), 500,610; socialists, 463,529. This
result is, therefore, a new triumph for our party, for if it gains
but five seats it is because the suppression of "election by ma-
jority" made it lose Mons. Charleroi and Thuin, where it is much
stronger than all the other parties combined. It is, then, rather
the increase in the number of votes that should be considered;
we have gained about 140,000 since 1896.
Another notable point in our success is that our influence is
beginning to pass beyond the purely industrial regions and to
extend into the farming regions, hitherto impenetrable. This
symptom is very important, for it shows us that success depends
upon ourselves and our own efforts.
The results of the election also show that the liberal party,
which believed that proportional representation would prove its
Fountain of Youth, is truly a party in decay. Almost every-
where since the last elections it is in retreat, and it is evident that,
while the advanced elements and all the young are coming over
to socialism, the moderate elements are already going into the
catholic party, not even voting for the liberal candidates pre-
sented at the elections.
27
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28 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
Another lesson from the 27th of May is the ridiculous num-
ber of votes obtained by the Christian democrats, who only suc-
ceeded in electing one single man, and, above all, the death of
that abortion called the "Liberal Labor Party/' which at Brus-
sels obtained 1,000 votes out of 220,000. This party, organized
at the instigation of "moderate liberal" employers, was intended
to divert workingmen from socialism.
One conclusion remains to be drawn, and that concerns the
future of the political movement. The opposition parties, at
least the socialists and the progressive liberals, will press on with
more ardor than ever to universal suffrage pure and simple at
21 years, and it is probable that with 1901 will begin an obstruc-
tionist campaign in parliament.
Will the moderate liberals join this movement? They hardly
seem attached to it today, and their inclinations are drawing
them closer to the catholic party, toward which their class affini-
ties push them, as do also their economic interests and their fear
of socialism.
Even today we have seen a part of their following pass over
to the clericals, in order to solidify the government, for they pre-
fer the present ministry to one in which the socialists might have
their word to say. It is, therefore, a concentration of capitalist
forces which is impending. While it awaits completion we are
organizing ourselves not only on the field of political struggles,
but our unions, our mutual benefit societies and, above all, our
co-operatives, are taking an ever wider flight, and we are becom-
ing more and more a state within a state, in a way to prepare us
to take the place of the capitalist world in all the domains where
its activity is exercised.
Prof. Entile Vinck.
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KARL MARX ON MONEY.
Karl Marx, when he comes to discuss the subject of money,
shows himself to be a victim of his own philosophy. He was a
product of his environment — of the conditions and circumstances
under which he lived. Living under an imperfect system of bi-
metallism, seeing that something was out of gear, and not being
able to discover what was wrong, as did Sir Isaac Newton (see
'The Silver Pound/' by Horton, pp. 91 and 264), he concludes
that under bimetallism it is always the predominating metal
alone which forms the standard of value. A great many other
good men whose names sound authoritative were deceived in
the same way. It was not till bimetallism had been destroyed
by stopping the free coinage of silver that men's eyes were
opened. They then found themselves in a condition similar to
that of the Frenchman who had been speaking prose all his life
and did not know what prose was. Marx and his contemporaries
lived under bimetallism all their lives, and only after this was
destroyed were such of them as lived long enough enabled to see
that even under imperfect bimetallism one metal alone is not the
standard of value.
The weight of Marx's name has carried the whole social-
ist party off its feet. Engels, Kautsky, Hyndman, Bax, Morris,
all swallow Marx's money theories as a material and indipensa-
ble part of his economic teachings. In America comrades Gron-
lund, Bersford, Vail, Ladoff, Saxon, Jackson and others keep
us well supplied with pamphlets and articles showing the fallacy
of a fifty-cent dollar and the necessity of intrinsic value money.
The Socialist Labor Party, in its platform of 1896, declared in
favor of government money. In its platform of 1900 it omitted
all so-called immediate demands. The Social Democratic Party,
in its platform of 1900, speaks of gold mines and public credit,
but evades taking any definite stand on the subject of money.
It may be that it is inopportune at the present time, full of so
many other troubles, to stir up the money question among so-
cialists; we ourselves have thought so, and were willing to wait
a while. It will stir up a good deal of bad blood. Billingsgate
will flow freely where arguments are lacking. We know what to
expect. We shall be looked upon, by our comrades, if not openly
so called, as a silver-plated socialist, a repudiator and an infla-
tionist in the pay of silver mine owners. But we are used to that.
We will cheerfully stand the billingsgate if the editor of the In-
ternational Socialist Review will bear the responsibility of allow-
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80 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
ing any discussion at all on the money question at the present
time. If socialism is to remain a science and not degenerate
into a dogma; if socialists are to maintain their proud and justi-
fied claim that they march in the front rank of scientific inquiry,
they will some day have to re-examine their position and admit
that Marx made a mistake about money — a mistake which is
easily accounted for, and in no way lessens the general value of
his economic and social teachings.
The true policy of socialists is not to attack the money re-
formers on their own ground and get beaten by .them, but to
acknowledge what is correct in their demands and point out to
them the fact that the government control of money would not
have the effect aimed at unless it also included government con-
trol of credit, which is now in the hands of banks; in other words,
that money reform is worthless unless it includes government
banking and a repeal of the laws which enable private lenders to
collect interest; that such a fundamental change as they demand
can never be brought about by the middle class; that nothing
short of a proletarian upheaval can overthrow the money power;
and that the only way to get what they seek is to join the social-
ist party.
Marx's views on money are found in Chapter HI of Capital
and in Chapter II of his Critique of Political Economy, published
in 1859, which is frequently referred to in the foot notes of Capi-
tal. Our space does not permit us to quote from these works
as copiously as we should wish. It is not easy to formulate clear-
ly Marx's views. His statements frequently appear to be contra-
dictory. If the principles we here attribute to him and criticise
do not truly represent his views we are willing to stand corrected.
Let us begin with Capital, page 61.
"The law that the quantity of the circulating medium is deter-
mined by the sum of the prices of the commodities circulating
and the average velocity of currency may also be stated as fol-
lows: Given the sum of the values of commodities and the aver-
age rapidity of their metamorphoses, the quantity of precious
metal current as money depends on the value of that precious
metal. The erroneous opinion that it is, on the contrary, prices
that are determined by the quantity of the circulating medium
and that the latter depends on the quantity of the precious metals
in a country; this opinion was based by those who first held it on
the absurd hypothesis that commodities are without a price and
money without a value when they first enter into circulation and
that once in the circulation an aliquot part of the medley of com-
modities is exchanged for an aliquot part of the heap of precious
metals."
We also quote foot note accompaning above statement: "Adam
Smith takes the right view where he says that the quantity of coin
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KARL MARX ON MONEY 81
in every country is regulated by the value of the commodities
which are to be circulated by it; that the value of goods annually
bought and sold in any country requires a certain quantity of
money to circulate and distribute them to their proper consum-
ers and can give employment to no more. The channel of circu-
lation necessarily draws to itself a sum sufficient to fill it and
never admits any more. (Wealth of Nations, Bk. IV, ch. 1.)"
Explanation: — The term price level, as used by us, means the
general range of prices. Marx's own word for this is Preisgrad.
Price sum means the total amount of sales. Marx's word for
this is Preissumme. It is the product of the total quantity of
commodities sold multiplied by the price level.
Money means the money in actual circulation, not including
hoards and reserves.
Commodities means the commodities actually on the market
for sale, not including stored or warehoused commodities.
Products mean articles that have been produced, but have not
yet been put upon the market for sale as merchandise or com-
modities. Products includes articles produced for use as well as
those produced for sale.
These distinctions, if kept clearly in mind, will aid us to ex-
press ourselves with more brevity and precision.
THE QUANTITY THEORY ACCORDING TO MARX.
Marx admits that the quantity theory of money applies in the
following cases:
First, to fiat money.
Second, to partially fiat money, as light weight silver coins un-
der limited coinage.
Third, to times of great changes in the value of gold, which
generally occur on the discovery of new and productive mines.
Fourth, to full weight free coinage gold money in gold produc-
ing countries, where the gold is coined direct for the miners'
account without being first bartered for commodities. (At least
this is as we understand Marx.)
Fifth, to cases where the weight of the unit is changed. But it
does not apply, Marx claims, to full weight, free coinage gold
money in non-gold producing countries, where the gold has to
be imported after having been bartered at the mines for com-
modities, provided, and mark well only on this proviso, viz., that
the value of gold, that is, the price level, remains unchanged dur-
ing all the changes in the quantity of money! Wer lacht da?
What are you laughing about? We claim that the value of money
depends on its quantity. Marx claims that the quantity of money
has nothing to do with its value, provided its value always re-
mains the same. We claim that a change in the quantity of money
will cause a change in its value. Marx says no, a change in the
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82 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
quantity of money will cause no change in its value, if its value
remains the same; that is, if the value of money does not change,
its value will remain the same.
MARX ADMITS THE QUANTITY THEORY OF MONEY TO BE TRUE IN
CASE OF A CHANGE IN THE VALUE OF GOLD.
This is all that has ever been claimed for the theory under free
coinage. It is admitted that under free coinage the value of gold
metal and gold coin is the same; but it is claimed that an increase
in the quantity of money by making money out of some other ma-
terial than gold lessens the value of gold as long as any gold
money remains in circulation. This Marx denies.
To decide whether a rise in the price level is due to a fall in the
value of gold, as Marx claims, or to an increase in the quantity of
money, as we claim, it is only necessary to observe that, if under
free coinage the coins be diminished in weight by one-half and
the same names retained, there would be a rise of the price level,
as Marx admits. If on the other hand, the coins be diminished
in weight by one-half, but the coinage limited in quantity to the
same number of coins as previously existed, the price level will
remain the same, though the value of the gold metal contained
in the coins will be one-half the same as formerly. This proves that
the quantity of money, and not the value of the metal in the coins
determines the price level. This is to Marx a stumbling block.
He cannot understand limited coinage, especially when concur-
rent with full weight coins. It did not exist on a large scale in
his time, and it appeared to him abnormal and unnatural. He
could not see that money is not a natural product, but a societary
creation. That it has exchange value, but no utility. He says
that money is by nature gold and silver. He denies that anything
can have exchange value without utility. (Capital, p. 5.) This
is the source of all his errors on the money question. He appears
to have thought this claim necessary to sustain his labor theory
of value. He would not make an exception of money.
He afterwards admits that there are two kinds of utility. "The
use value of the money commodity becomes twofold. In addition
to its special use value as a commodity, (gold for instance serving
to stop teeth, to form the raw material of articles of luxury, etc.)
it acquires a formal use value originating in its specific social
function." (Capital, p. 39.)
That is, money may have a value and yet have no utility other
than its social utility as a perpetual medium of exchange.
If Marx were living to-day, he might go to any large bank
in London and buy a £'s worth of Indian rupees; he would get a
certain weight of silver coins. He might then buy a £ 9 s worth of
Mexican dollars; he would get a very much greater weight of
silver coins. He could then sit down and do some hard thinking,.
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KARL MARX ON MONEY 88
and might finally come to the conclusion that the value of money,
whether paper, silver, or gold depends on something else than its
weight; that free coinage, upon which he bases all his discussion
of money, is no more a natural system of money than capitalism
is the natural and eternal system of economy; that free coinage
is only a method of- allowing private persons, (mine owners,) to
issue money the same as bank owners are allowed to do the same
thing by issuing paper money; that the nationalization of all
money and credits, as demanded in the Communist Manifesto
would abolish free coinage and knock the bottom out of Marx's
whole theory of money.
Marx cannot understand how one ounce of metal can be of
equal exchange value with two ounces of the same metal; neither
can we. But we can readily understand how one ounce of metal-
lic coin can be of equal value with two ounces of metallic coin,
or two ounces of uncoined metal, and the illustration of the In-
dian rupee under limited coinage, and Mexican dollars under
free coinage will explain it.
THAT THE PRICE LEVEL IS ALWAYS CONSTANT.
All of Marx's theories about money are based upon this as-
sumption, and it is necessary to keep this constantly in mind
when reading what he has to say. Marx tells us frankly that in
his reasoning he considers the value of gold as given, as fixed;
which of course implies that the price level is also fixed, for the
price level is the way the value of gold is indicated. Do not con-
found price level with particular prices; particular prices may
change, and yet the general range of prices, the price level, may
be stable. A clear perception of this fact is indispensable to an
understanding of money.
With a fixed price level, Marx asserts that the quantity of cur-
rency or gold in circulation depends on the price sum, that is the
aggregate of all prices realized, or the aggregate of sales. These
terms, price level and price sum, are Marx's own words, (Preis-
grad, Preissumme.) The aggregate of sales, or price sum, is made
up of two factors, the price level or rate of sale and the quantity
oi commodities sold. As the price level is fixed, to say that the
quantity of currency depends on the price sum is the same as to
say that the quantity of currency depends on the quantity of com-
modities sold. What Marx says, therefore, amounts to this:
the price level being fixed, the quantity of money depends on the
quantity of commodities. So far as we can see, Marx is right;
his conclusion is unassailable. It is a poor rule that will not work
both ways, and we find that Marx's rule will work both ways.
The other way to work it would be to say that with a fixed price
level the amount of commodities sold depends on the amount of
gold in circulation. This conclusion is also unassailable. Tak-
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f
84 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
ing the three terms, price level and money and commodities, and
assuming one of them to be fixed, various conclusions can be
drawn as to the other two terms. Let P. L. stand for price level,
M. for money, C. for commodities. The whole scheme stated in
tabular form would be as follows:
With P. L. fixed, M. depends on C,
or C. depends on M.
With M. fixed, P. L. depends on C,
or C. depends on P. L.
With C. fixed, P. L. depends on M.,
or M. depends on P. L.
Whjr Marx, out of these six forms, should pick out one only and
harp on it to the exclusion of the other five, we cannot see.
Commodities are produced and sold by private individuals ac-
cording to their necessities without any regard to the price level.
Gold is produced and put into circulation as money by private in-
dividuals according to their necessities or interest without any
regard to the price level. The price level is the result of these
two forces operating against each other, and fluctuates up or down
as the production of one factor increases or diminishes with ref-
erence to the other. It is about as stable as the mercury. in a
thermometer. These are the facts. With these facts before him,
Marx puts the question, How much money should there be in
circulation? He replies by saying that, if we assume a stable
price level, the quantity of money will be regulated entirely by the
quantity of commodities sold. This is the sum and substance of
thirty-five pages of financial philosophy in Capital, and one hun-
dred and fifty-six pages in Critique. "The mountain labored and
brought forth a mouse/' It is difficult to treat the proposition
with the respect due the author. When metal and coin are in-
terconvertible and coin forms the exclusive currency with no
credit, no paper money, no light weight coin, and no debased
coin, these being the conditions which Marx assumes in simple
circulation, and when this metal is further assumed to have a
stable value, and that no change is possible in the unit of price,
i. e., in the weight of the coins, then indeed the science of money
becomes vastly simplified; it is simplified out of existence. Noth-
ing remains to be said on the subject.
Let us allow Marx to make these suppositions:
i. Supposing gold to be of stable value.
2. And supposing gold metal to be coinable without limita-
tion.
3. And supposing gold coins to be decoinable or meltable
without limitation.
4. And supposing as a result of 2 and 3 that gold metal and
gold coins are of equal value (disregarding abrasion) and that
therefore gold coins are of stable value.
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KARL MARX ON MONEY 85
5. And supposing that price level (prices) is only another
name for gold coins estimated by unit of price fixed by govern-
ment, instead of by unit of weight.
6. And supposing that the unit of price is stable and not
changed by the government.
7. And supposing gold money were the exclusive medium of
exchange and there were no check offsets or credit of any kind.
8. And supposing that gold could be produced evenly and
regularly to an unlimited extent the same as any article of com-
mon manufacture.
9. And supposing that money were not more readily and uni-
versally exchangeable than an ordinary commodity; or that men
did not act according to their self-interest, and did not prefer
money to commodities as a form of stored labor; that is, suppos-
ing a change in human nature, then indeed Marx's observations
on money might be in point.
But there is no such exclusive gold currency in existence as
Marx assumes. The silver and fiat currency exceeds the gold
currency, and the credit exceeds in efficiency the combined cur-
rency of gold, silver and fiat. We admit Marx's conclusion, but
we object to the introduction of it into the discussion as irrele-
vant, immaterial and incompetent. The question for investigation
is not the quantity of money with a stable price level, but the
quantity of money as affecting the price level. A stable price
level is desirable, as all admit. Governments allow the use of fiat
money, light weight coins and credit, all of which affect the price
level. The government pretends to keep the price level stable;
all taxes are levied and salaries of government officers are fixed
on that understanding. The government has no control over the
production of commodities and no control over the production
of gold. The only means it has of exercising a control over the
price level is by regulating the amount of fiat money. This it
can do and does do, though at present it does it very poorly and
at haphazard.
Marx cannot shield himself behind the plea that it was not his
province to suggest remedies, but to discuss facts, and explain
actual phenomena. He does not discuss facts. In supposing an
exclusive gold currency without silver and without credit he is
drawing entirely on his imagination; no such currency has ever
existed, unless he has in mind something like coon skin money or
tobacco money. It is Utopian money. To say that bimetallism is
impossible when it is actually in existence before your eyes,
though in an imperfect form, and to assume an exclusive gold
currency as the basis for a discussion of money is certainly a
master piece in the art of ignoring a difficulty instead of solving
it. To what desperate lengths a man is driven who ignores facts
can be seen in Hyndman's Bankruptcy of India, p, 215. This
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86 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
great Marxian economist, following his master, rejects bimetal-
lism. He ends by recommending that gold be demonetized the
world over, and that silver be used as exclusive currency. This
is the proposition of a hard-headed, matter of fact evolutionist,
who pities bimetallists as deluded dreamers.
THAT PRODUCTS ARE DIRECTLY BARTERED FOR GOLD AT THE
MINES. THAT THEREBY THEIR VALUE BECOMES FIXED SO THAT
WHEN THEY COME UPON THE MARKET AS COMMODITIES THEIR
PRICE IN GOLD IS DETERMINED BEFOREHAND.
Against this view it may here be observed that the products
bartered for gold at the mines do not afterwards come upon the
market as commodities, but pass over into use, and are con-
sumed. Again, products before they are bartered have a price;
in fact they are no longer products, they are already commodities,
which means that their counterpart, money, is already in existence.
Marx says that barter comes before price and fixes price. Barter
does come before price in one sense; it exists before the in-
troduction of money. Money is introduced by fixing upon
unit of price. Thereupon a price at once attaches to all products
offered for exchange or sale. From now on the price comes before
barter; in fact, primitive barter is abolished and price barter takes
its place. All barter is conducted with reference to the prices of
the commodities bartered. A commodity bartered for gold at the
mines brings just as much gold as if sold for a price in money,
no more and no less. It is price that fixes barter value, not barter
value that fixes price. Gold itself has a price expressed in units
of valuation.
Mr. Hyndman sees this: "So completely has the idea of valu-
ation apart from money disappeared that insensibly those who
wish to obtain other articles in place of their own, estimate the
value of their possessions which they propose to transfer, not
with reference to the need which they have of the other articles
they desire to possess in place of these, but with regard to the
price that either would realize if brought into the open market.
An exchange of commodities may be directly effected between
individuals in this way; but still in spite of all they can do, the
vision of the price current is ever before them. ,, (Hyndman,
Economics of Socialism, p. 114.)
THAT A COUNTRY REQUIRES A CERTAIN QUANTITY OF MONEY TO
CIRCULATE ITS COMMODITIES, NO MORE AND NO LESS.
This is true on the assumption made by Marx that the price
level is stable. It is not the conclusion that we object to but
the assumption on which it is based.
This claim is closely interwoven with the question of interna-
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KARL MARX ON MONEY 87
tional parity of exchange, free coinage and meltage, and the re-
coinage of foreign coins into domestic coins, all matters to which
Marx gave little attention, though they are of fundamental im-
portance.
Let us see if this rule will work both ways. If a country re-
quires only a certain amount of money to correspond with its com-
modities, then the converse must be true, viz., that with a stable
price level a country requires only a certain amount of com-
modities to correspond with its money; that the money of a
country will carry only so much merchandise and no more, and
when the channel is full the surplus will overflow. Where will it
overflow to ? To foreign countries by way of exports. But con-
sidering the whole world as one commodity producing country,
as in fact it is, for commodities are international, where would the
overflow go to? Marx does not answer. He cannot answer be-
cause his famous stable price level would break down.
Marx complains of Ricardo that he gives the discussion of the
money question an international tinge. (Critique, p. 184.) So
did Marx give the labor question an international tinge. Science
is international. When the money under consideration is made
of an international metal subject to free coinage, recoinage and
decoinage, no other method of consideration, except from the
international standpoint, is worth anything.
To claim that gold has an intrinsic value, and that therefore
only so much can circulate in a country as corresponds with the
quantity of merchandise in that country is to confuse concrete
labor value with social labor value, and implies that the social
labor value of a product can never change. The concrete labor
expended in producing a product is ascertained at the time of
production of that particular product, and, of course, never
changes for that particular article. But the social labor value of
that particular article when it becomes a commodity and mingles
with other like articles produced at different times and under dif-
ferent conditions, is subject to constant fluctuations. If it has
an intrinsic value or value of its own, as Marx expresses it, such
value is at any rate not fixed.
Now, gold differs from other articles in several particulars;
first, it is not produced normally in indefinite quantities, but is
discovered accidentally in uncertain and irregular, but always
comparatively small quantities; second, it is indestructible, and
there being a large stock on hand the annual output affects the
total quantity but little, an dthe social labor value of the annual
output, considered apart from the old stock on hand, is a matter
of almost no consequence; third, it is an article endowed by law,
through free coinage, with the peculiar and unique quality of uni-
versal salability, so to speak. This quality can be given only to a
comparatively scarce article. To give it to an article capable of in-
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88 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
definite and universal protection would defeat the object sought;
fourth, being thus universally salable, and its production being in
the hands of private individuals, each working for his own pri-
vate interest regardless of what others are doing and regardless of
the public requirements, its production is always carried on at a
maximum, just as banks of issue, when free to do so, issue their
notes to the utmost limits. Yet in spite of these striking features,
which distinguish gold under free coinage from all other articles,
Marx implies that gold miners regulate their output to corre-
spond with the volume of commodities, so as to maintain a stable
price level; that if they do keep on mining beyond the require-
ments of a stable price level, they are mining for use and not for
profit. It is not because the production of gold can to a slight
extent be controlled by individuals that makes it usable as money;
it is rather in spite of that fact.
THAT ALL THE GOLD IN A COUNTRY DOES NOT ENTER INTO CIR-
CULATION.
This is superficially true; but essentially it is utterly false and
misleading. In every country a certain amount of gold is needed
for the arts, for plate, ornaments and jewelry; some is also kept
as hoards and reserves; all the rest circulates as money, and this
money volume can in no way be increased, except within very
narrow limits out of hoards and reserves, but by no means to
correspond with the increase of commodities. So that it is per-
fectly correct, speaking broadly, to say, that substantially all the
gold in a country enters into circulation, and this would be true
in principle even though a much larger proportion were used in
the arts than now. Just as there is a minimum standard of living
at any one time and place, but not always and everywhere the
same, which determines the value of labor power, so there is in
every country a minimum quantity of gold needed for non-mon-
etary purposes, out of which no increase of the circulating medium
can be derived. The relative amount of such hoards differs in
different countries. It is greater in India than in France, and
greater in France than in England.
Gold metal stands in the same relation to gold money that
products do to commodities. To say, therefore, that all the gold
in a country does not circulate as money is analogous to saying
that all the products of a country do not circulate as commodities.
This is superficially true. But in substance it is false. A cer-
tain minimum of the products are consumed by the producers as
utilities without ever becoming commodities, but everything
above that, in short, the vast bulk of the products is thrown upon
the market as commodities. No one demonstrates this so clearly
as Marx. All his economic writings go to show that the pre-
vailing system of production to-day is the production of corn-
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KARL MARX ON MONEY 8»
modities not utilities. But when he comes to gold he falls down,
whether out of reverence, or fear, or ignorance, we know not
which. With him gold is an exception. It is produced for use,
not for exchange. It is a utility, not a commodity. Although
gold is mined for profit, and not for use, yet he implies that it is
not thrown upon the market. Money is the chief form which
gold takes when it is thrown upon the market. It is either a
utility, or it takes the form of money instead of becoming a com-
modity. It is apparent, then, at a glance how absurd it is to
claim, as Marx does, that only a certain modicum of gold can be
put upon the market as money, and that all above that is produced
for use and not for exchange.
THAT THE QUANTITY OF MONEY DEPENDS ON THE QUANTITY OF
COMMODITIES SOLD.
That is, if more commodities are sold they will call forth more
money, so that the price level will remain the same.
This statement appears to us to rest upon some contradictory
and impossible assumptions. Marx first assumes that the price
level is and remains stable. This implies that there is a given
quantity of money and a given quantity of commodities. He
next assumes that more commodities are sold. But this is an im-
possibility. With a given amount of money and a fixed price level
more commodities cannot be sold. If sold, they would have to be
sold at a lower price level, which is contrary to the first sup-
position. The increased sale of commodities, therefore, cannot
be the cause of an increase in the quantity of money. It cannot
precede the increase in money, but must be simultaneous with it.
One cannot be the cause of the other. Commodity producers do
not regulate their activity by that of money producers. They act
privately, each individual according to his own supposed interest.
Money producers do not regulate their activity by that of com-
modity producers. They act privately, each individual according
to his own supposed interest, regardless of the effect of his activ-
ity when combined with that of other individuals on the world's
market as a whole.
To suppose that money and commodities increase simultan-
eusly, so as to maintain a stable price level is to assume that
there is a planful and concerted action between commodity pro-
ducers and money producers according to some previous agree-
ment. Such assumptions belong in the land of dreams. They
are Utopian.
The assertion that to manufacture commodities is to manufac-
ture additional money, or that to manufacture money is to manu-
facture additional commodities, only needs to be plainly put be-
fore the mind to appear in all its naked absurdity. But the as-
sertion that to manufacture more commodities lowers the price
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40 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
level, or that to manufacture more money raises the price level,
is a self-evident truth to every one who is not glued to the idea
that nothing, not even money, can have exchange value unless it
has utility in addition to its function as a medium of exchange.
THAT PRIVATE HOARDS SERVE AS EQUALIZERS.
They do perhaps to a limited extent, but by no means to the
extent of supplying the amount of currency needed in proportion
to the commodities, as Marx claims. Just as gold is mined en-
tirely to suit the interest of the individual mine owner and re-
gardless of whether the volume of commodities is increasing or
diminishing, so hoards are accumulated and paid out to suit the
interest of the individual owner regardless of the volume of com-
modities; and so also where banks are allowed to issue notes,
they are issued entirely to suit the interest of the particular bank
regardless of the public requirements. If hoards accomplished
what Marx claims for them, there would never be any rise or
fall of the price level. If the government should maintain a large
reserve and expand or contract it in the interest of the public
solely for the purpose of keeping the price level stable it might
do some good. We have recently had a fine example of how
our officials manage such things. In November, 1899, at a time
when the price level was rising, and had been rising for months,
and when, therefore, money instead of being issued should rather
have been hoarded, Secretary Gage, regardless of the public wel-
fare, and solely in the interest of a small clique of stock exchange
speculators issued from the reserve $25,000,000 by buying bonds,
so far as offered, thereby expanding the currency. He did for
his friends exactly what a bank does for itself when it issues bank
notes for its own profit regardless of the state of the currency,
and exactly what a gold miner does when he works a rich mine
to the utmost in his own interest, even though the public welfare
requires that it be shut down. If the government owned the gold
mines, the private hoards and the banks of issue, and operated:
them with reference to maintaining a stable price level, something
might be accomplished. But to claim, as Marx does, that private
mines and private hoards are now managed so as to have that
effect is to claim something which can be supposed or assumed,
but it is not in accordance with the actual facts.
THAT THE VALUE OF GOLD IS NOT AFFECTED BY THE USE OF
FIAT MONEY.
The same principle would, of course, apply to the use of light
weight coins, bank bills, credit and bimetallic money; it also im-
plies that if gold were entirely demonetized, its value would re-
main the same.
Marx complains bitterly that Ricardo and James Mill set out
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KARL MARX ON MONEY 41
to prove that the use of fiat money affects the value of gold and
end by assuming it without proof. (Critique, p. 193.) Marx de-
mands proof of it. The quantity theory of value applies not only
to money, but also to the money commodity.
It is true that fiat money does not increase the total quantity
of gold. But the fact that gold coin and gold bullion are inter-
convertible does not make them the same thing at the same time;
when gold is money it is not bullion, and when it is bullion or is
hoarded even in the form of coin it is not money. A product can-
not be money and a commodity at the same time. Herein lies one
of Marx's vital errors. He regards gold coin when hoarded as the
same thing as gold coin in circulation, only performing a differ-
ent function. Therefore, he argues, fiat money, although it will
drive gold money out of circulation, will not lessen the quantity
of gold money, and will not increase the quantity of gold bullion
compared with gold money, and, therefore, will not lessen the
value of gold. This is what Marx claims in one place.
Let us pit Marx against Marx. Take the three factors, gold in
circulation, price level and commodities. With a fixed value of
gold, which means a fixed price level, Marx says the quantity of
gold in circulation will vary with the quantity of commodities. If
this be true, then with a fixed quantity of commodities the quan-
tity of gold in circulation will vary with the changes in the price
level, and the changes in the price level will vary with the quantity
of gold in circulation; nota bene, the price level is directly con-
nected with the quantity of circulating medium, and has no con-
nection with the quantity of coin in hoards. Here Marx shows
very plainly that so far as price level is concerned gold coin
in hoards and gold coin in circulation are two entirely different
things; that hoards have no effect on the price level, which is de-
termined wholly by the quantity of the circulating medium, as-
suming the quantity of commodities to be fixed. But what is the
price level? The price level is the value of gold. The value of
gold, therefore, so long as it continues to form any part of the
circulating medium, depends on the quantity of that circulating
medium.
Marx distinguishes between price and value. Price depends
on supply and demand, that is on quantity; value depends on
amount of labor power. Price fluctuates around value, some-
times above and sometimes below it, the temporary price depend-
ing on the quantity of the commodity in the market. (Marx:
Value, Price and Profit, p. 36.)
Applying this line of reasoning it might also be claimed that in
barter things are exchanged according to their temporary value
which might be either above or below their real labor value. It
might also be claimed that the price level does not indicate the
true value of gold but only its temporary value. In short that
r
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43 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
there are two kinds of exchange value, temporary exchange value
and true exchange value and that every one is free to decide for
himself when a thing is exchanged for its temporary value and
when for its true value. All you need to do therefore to save
yourself in a debate is merely to remark that what your opponent
calls value is not after all true value, (of which you are the sole
judge) but only temporary value.
The labor theory of value may apply to the relative value of
commodities as among themselves. It does not apply as between
all commodities on one hand and the money commodity or
money on the other. The relation between these two is never
anything else than a temporary relation. Therefore the neces-
sity for Marx to assume that gold has a stable value and thereby
remove the discussion from this world to Utopia.
Let us again make use of Marx's favorite language, mathemat-
ics. Let P — price, or price level; Q — quantity, scarcity or supply
and demand; V — value; L — labor or labor power. Now, price
says Marx, varies as quantity, but value varies as labor power,
that is:
Now suppose with Marx that the value of gold is stable and the
unit of price or weight of coin is stable, then price and value will
coincide and be equal. So will quantity and labor power coin-
cide and be equal. There will be no fluctuations between price
and value. Then we will have:
Now, says, Marx, do you not see that price varies as labor
power? Yes, we see it. We also see that this is only one quarter
oi the whole truth. Why does Marx ignore the other three forms,
especially the fourth one, which shows the remarkable fact that
value varies as quantity, and not as labor power? In supposing
that price and value coincide Marx has abolished the difference
between his labor theory of value and the quantity theory.
THAT FIAT MONEY REPRESENTS GOLD.
There are two kinds of fiat money ; first, fiat money concurrent
with gold; second, fiat money with gold demonetized. In the first
case, it may be said in one sense that fiat money represents gold,
inasmuch as it coalesces with gold money, and its movements con-
form to the movements of gold money, so long as any of that is
left in circulation in the sphere in which fiat money circulates;
when all the gold is driven out of this sphere, fiat money can no
longer be said to represent gold. Neither does fiat money repre-
sent gold when gold is demonetized. The present fiat silver
money of India does not represent gold and has no connection
with gold. Neither does it represent silver bullion.
It is frequently claimed that California during the civil war
of 1861 to 1865 formed an exception to the power of the state to
create fiat money. The money in that case was a partial legal
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KARL MARX ON MONEY 48
tender greenback with gold monetized, and the state government
working at cross-purposes with the federal government. Suppose
at that time both gold and silver had been demonetized and full
legal tender fiat money had been issued, supported by both state
and nation, how much gold would have circulated as currency?
Marx admits that the value of fiat money depends on its quan-
tity, but claims that the value of gold money does not depend
on its quantity, but on the barter value of gold; that its barter
value, however, does depend on its quantity, because it is bartered
for commodities on the basis of its quantity. We are unable to
see any essential difference between saying that the value of
gold money depends on its quantity, and saying that the value of
gold metal depends on its quantity, metal and money being inter-
convertible. Marx's answer would probably be that although
metal can be converted into coin, this coin cannot be put into
circulation and become money, so as to change the price level,
without breaking his assumption that the price level is always
the same. Here is where he has us. In one place he says that fiat
money, though it will drive gold out of circulation, will not
lessen the quantity of gold money, i. e., it remains mon-
ey after it has gone out of circulation. In another
place he says that metal, though converted into
coin, is not money unless it is put into circulation. If
a man is at liberty to shuffle the facts to suit his convenience at
different times he can prove almost anything.
THAT MONEY SHOULD NOT BE TREATED INTERNATIONALLY.
Commodities are international and their counterpart money,
when the material of it is a commodity as gold, is necessarily also
international. It is true that the coins of one nation do not circu-
late in another, but the gold of one nation does circulate in the
coins of another. Marx says international trade is barter. But
what kind of barter? Barter is of two kinds; first, primitive bar-
ter without price; second, price barter, which is an exchange made
on the basis of price, but without the actual intervention of money,
though it presupposes the existence of money. International
trade between gold using countries is barter of the second kind
and does not differ in substance, though it does in form, from do-
mestic trade. International trade is not even barter between coun-
tries having entirely disconnected money systems, as for example,
between an exclusive gold country and an exclusive silver coun-
try, or an exclusive paper country, or between two exclusive paper
countries having different paper money systems. Even here it is
not barter properly speaking. It takes place on the basis of price
according to whatever rate of exchange happens to prevail at the
time, there being no fixed par of exchange.
If this should fall under the eye of some monometallism who
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44 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
also claims to be an international socialist, it would be interesting
to have him explain on what theory he advocates disparity of ex-
change, or defends the existing disparity of exchange as being
beneficial to the proletariat; if a falling price level benefits the
proletariat of gold countries, how does a rising price level benefit
the proletariat of silver countries ? Or conversely, if a falling price
level injures the proletariat of gold countries, how can a rising
price level injure the proletariat of silver countries? And if disparity
of exchange between the gold group and the silver group is a
good thing for the proletariat why not have disparity of exchange
between the different countries of each group? Universal mono-
metallism might be a good thing, but until that comes it is ad-
vantageous to have the money of different countries interchange-
able at a fixed par of exchange; and it appears to us inconsistent
in the monometallist, who claims to be the friend of the working
men of the world to ride rough shod over all those who do not
happen to live in gold using countries.
International parity of exchange, even without an international
unit of account, but especially combined with such a unit, would
be a most powerful bond of union between the working men of
all countries. It would facilitate comparisons and tend to equalize
economic conditions in all countries and pave the way for uniform
wages, hours, etc. It is one of those steps which capitalism will
take in its own interest, but which will prove to be a step towards
its own overthrow.
WHERE WE DIFFER.
Marx says the quantity of money is regulated by the quantity
oi commodities.
We say the quantity of money, with simple gold circulation, is
not regulated at all, but is accidental and irregular, depending on
the output of the mines.
Marx says the total quantity of gold in existence cuts no figure,
because it does not all circulate as money.
We say that after deducting a certain percentage for ornaments,
for use in the arts and for hoards, all the rest circulates as money,
and that other things being equal, an increase in the total quantity
of gold means an increase in circulation. The total quantity of
gold does cut a figure.
Marx says that price level is the cause and money is the effect.
We say that money is the cause and price level is the effect.
That until money is created there is no such thing as price level.
Marx says that the relative value of gold and commodities is
fixed by barter at the mines before the gold is coined.
We say that after the establishment of free coinage there is no
such thing as barter for gold, except with reference to the coin-
age value of the gold.
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KARL MARX ON MONEY 45
Marx says that under bimetallism one metal only is the meas-
ure of value.
We say that metal is never the measure of value, not even under
monometallism; but that the total quantity of money which cir-
culates is the measure of value in all cases whether under mono-
metallism, bimetallism, paper money, or counterfeit money.
Marx says that commodities enter circulation with a fixed price.
We say that although the price of a particular article is fixed
at the moment of sale, yet that same article immediately there-
after, or another article of the same kind, may have a different
price; that when goods are put upon the market for sale their ask-
ing price is continually changing.
Marx says that gold enters circulation with a given value
We say that although at the moment of a particular purchase
the value of gold is fixed, yet between purchases the value of gold
may be continually changing.
Marx says that although gold may be mined and coined, it can-
not be put into circulation, unless commodities exist to corre-
spond with the gold; and implies that although products may be
produced, they cannot be put upon the market as commodities and
sold, unless enough money is in circulation to enable them to
fetch a given price.
We say that commodities are sold for what they will fetch, be
it much or little, and that gold when coined will be put into cir-
culation for what it will buy, be it much or little.
Marx admits that the quantity of money is directly connected
with price sum, or respectivly price level. One is the cause, the
other is the effect. But which is which? Mlarx says price sum
is the cause and quantity of money is the effect.
We say that money is prior in time, and must first exist before
there can be any such thing as price, or price sum or price level;
that money is the cause and price sum is the effect.
Marx says with Adam Smith that a country needs only so much
money and that no more will circulate.
We say that a country will use all the money that the law per-
mits to be made (except customary hoards). In one sense Marx's
claim is partially true, but only partially — just enough so to show
that it is thoroughly false. For instance, i£ several countries are
on a gold standard each one can circulate only its proportionate
share of money to keep its price level the same as in the other
countries. But take all these countries together, let them increase
their money simultaneously and they can increase it tenfold or a
hundredfold. Again, one of these countries alone, as long as it
has gold to export, can by exporting it increase the money of
the other countries and thereby make it possible to increase its
own circulation over what it was before, without losing its parity
of exchange with the other countries.
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46 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
Marx says that fiat money will drive out gold.
We say, don't you believe it. It will do no such thing. This
is what is called Gresham's law, and as commonly applied is false.
Bad money, that is, fiat money, will no more drive out good
money than good money will. As between several countries on
a gold basis fiat money will drive gold from one country to an-
other, provided it is issued in one country alone and not in all.
But it will drive no gold out of circulation; if the gold does not
circulate in one country it will in others. So will good money
drive out good money if it is issued in one country alone. It will
drive out just as much as fiat money would, no more and no less.
But it will not drive it out of circulation. It will reappear in the
circulation of other countries. But if additional money whether
good or bad be issued in these different countries simultaneously,
each receiving its proportionate quota, they would preserve a par
of exchange, no gold would be driven out of circulation and none
would be exported from one country to another.
Marx says that under fiat money there is no standard. (Capital,
P. 65.)
We say that the total quantity of money of all kinds, even in-
cluding counterfeit money, forms the standard of value.
Marx says that fiat money represents gold.
We say that so far as a standard of value is concerned fiat
money no more represents gold than it represents hay or potatoes.
With reference to a scale or standard of price it may be admitted
that among modern nations fiat money has been developed his-
torically out of commodity money and its representatives; and that
it retains the old names for the units even after it has become en-
tirely separated fron> and independent of commodity money.
"This Odilon Barrot was appointed president of the inquiry
commission and drew up a complete indictment against the Feb-
ruary revolution, which ran as follows: March 17, Manifestation;
April 16, Conspiracy; May 15, Attack; June 23, Civil War. Why
didn't he extend his learned criminal researches back to February
24th? The Journal des Debats gave the true answer: the 24th
of February is the date of the founding of Rome. The origin of
states is lost in a myth which we must accept by faith, but may
not discuss." (Marx. Class Struggles in France, p. 44.)
Well said, comrade Marx, excellently well said! As with states
so with price level. You extend your learned researches as to price
level back to some point subsequent to the introduction of money
or the fixing of the unit of valuation. But why not go back to the
origin of money when the quantity of money or the weight of the
unit was fixed? Because the origin of money you assume to be
lost in a myth which we must accept by faith, but may not dis-
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KARL MARX ON MONEY 47
cuss; it would be sacrilege; because forsooth we should there dis-
cover the wonderful secret, the key of all knowledge on the money
question, that the quantity of money determines the price level at
the starting point, and at all times thereafter.
But this is only tautology, some one will say. Very well; if it
is only tautology why not frankly admit it ? Why be at such pains
to refute what is only a tautology ?
So it is also a tautology to say that with an exclusive commod-
ity money of stable value under free coinage and no credit
the quantity of money depends upon the value of the metal. It is
not only a tautology; it is a supposition contrary to existing facts.
Comrades, what kind of a hearing do you expect to get on the
weightier matters, when such Utopian dreams are put forth as the
science of money and as an indispensable part of the economics of
socialism? "Aussprechen das was ist!"
Marcus Hitch.
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TRADES UNIONS AND SOCIALISM.
The question is often propounded: "What is the trade union
movement doing for socialism?"
Before making answer off-hand, it will be well to consider a
few facts. In the first place, the trade unions are composed of a
heterogeneous mass of workingmen, the majority of whom have
had little conception of economic development and industrial
revolution. They have been taught by their fathers, by the old
school of political philosophers, by the press and pulpit; that
•there is a chance for everyone to become president of the
United States or a millionaire. Up to recent years there were
still opportunities to take advantage of natural resources, to
"go West, young man, and grow up with the country ," and the
average workingman, in or out of the union, honestly believed
that the competitive system of capitalism was, on the whole, a
just and scientific system — all that it needed was a little reform
grease here and there to make it run smoothly.
But as machinery began slowly and surely to make inroads on
the trades, the union member, undisciplined and untutored as he
was, gradually became impatient and restless, and this dissatis-
faction found vent, politically, in supporting Greenback, Union
Labor or People's parties, or "good men" and "workingmen's
friends" on the old party tickets. Throughout all this extraor-
dinary "reform" maneuvering the stubborn fact of material in-
terests stands out plain, and there was likewise a vague class-
consciousness discernible. The labor giant was uneasy, truly,
but he still had his eye on that million and the presidency. "If I
can only knock down that tariff wall and bust the protection bar-
ons somehow, or get plenty of greenbacks and free silver," he
argued, "I can get a start and become rich and a great states-
man.''
But as the tools of labor developed and grew larger, capital
kept pace and centralized, until to-day the company and cor-
poration is no longer a factor in production, and the individual
producer is not even considered. The amalgamation of capital
has utterly dissipated the day-dream of our trade union friend.
He is now beginning to see that his "chance" has gone glim-
mering — that he chased a rainbow, that he cannot hope to com-
pete with a Rockefeller industrially or a Hanna politically. All
about him he observes trusts and combines raising prices of
products and lowering wages at will. All about him he sees a
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TRADES UNIONS AND SOCIALISM 49
Hanna or Croker, a Piatt or Jones, big and little political bosses,
dictating nominations and platforms and manufacturing "issues"
without consulting anybody but their immediate henchmen. The
political machine has become as thoroughly organized and com-
pact as the machine he operates in the shop.
Meanwhile, through all this economic and political change,
the thinking, intelligent mechanic has at least stuck to his union,
and struggled and fought as best he knew how to wrest some
temporary benefit from the capitalistic master. He could not
well do otherwise. He instinctively understood that there was
strength in union, that to stand alone was suicidal. He had
listened to the Republican campaign orator promise glorious
conditions if the tariff wall were maintained, and he saw the
protected barons resort to lockouts, wage-cutting and the smash-
ing of unions. He listened to the free silver orator promise un-
bounded prosperity to labor, and he saw the mine barons declare
lockouts, secure the annulment of eight-hour and mining laws,
erect "bull pens" and use every effort to destroy unions — the one
and only protection against absolute slavery.
To learn all this has required time, the expenditure of vast
sums of money, and object lessons galore. The conscientious
unionists have viewed with some amazement and disappointment
how legislators juggled with "labor bills" — either by pigeon-
holing them or passing them in such form that courts found it
an easy matter to declare them unconstitutional. In time of
strike or lockout, the executives of nation, state or municipality,
heralded far and wide before election as "the friends of labor,"
supinely called out troops, militia and police to do the bidding
of employers. While blacklisting has been winked at by the
powers that be, boycotting has been tabooed and is regarded as
a conspiracy and crime in many states, punishable by fine and
imprisonment. Besides the waste of immense treasure, these les-
sons have been costly in the spilling of blood, in the jailing of
men, and in the sacrifice of human life.
To declare that these cold, grim facts have made no impres-
sion on intelligent trade unionists is to place them in the cate-
gory witti dumb brutes or inanimate things. Time was when
the trade union was a stamping-ground for corrupt politicians, a
market-place where votes were bought and sold. A dozen years
back it was common to hear that certain "labor leaders" carried
their unions in their vest pockets. City central bodies were an
easy prey for the "workingman's friend/' and a little "inflooence"
and beer secured endorsements for any office-seeker. If per-
chance some union man was placed on a ticket and elected, one
of two things happened. Either he "sold out," that is, betrayed,
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50 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
his constituents in the matter of fighting for palliatives, or, where
he did attempt to secure some advantage for his class, he was
quietly relegated to obscurity by the bosses.
Thus we have passed through a bitter school of experience,
and, as before stated, the trade unionist has and is still learning
valuable lessons. The question asked at the beginning of this
article may be answered with the statement that the trade unions
are at last moving in the right direction. Distinct and impor-
tant progress has taken place. In the first place, the unions are
no longer endorsing machines for politicians, and where some
local or central body still allows itself to be used by some uncon-
scionable member, it is the exception rather than the rule, and
such organization is regarded with contempt by all active union-
ists. Secondly, the old falsehood that "the interests of employ-
ers and employes are identical" is now seldom heard in union
circles. Once that generalization was considered gospel, and
men were sharply criticized in union meetings if they dared to
express the opinion that the claim of "identity of interests" was
out of harmony with the truth under the profit and wage system
of capitalism. Thirdly, there is a steady growth of sentiment
among trade union people that they must act together politically
as well as industrially, and where there is any step taken by
organizations it is usually a declaration for independent political
action. Still better, where union men accept nominations on old
party tickets they are coming to be regarded with suspicion as
decoy ducks and bellwethers for the capitalist class. Fourthly,
quite a few of the national organizations have declared for the
downfall of the capitalist system and the institution of socialism,
and many more of the unions (in fact, nearly all of consequence)
have declared that it is the duty of their memberships to take up
the discussion of economic questions for the good and welfare
of the organization and the labor movement as a whole.
There are other facts that might be cited to show that organ-
ized labor is making rapid strides along the right line, but those
mentioned will suffice at present. It might be added that trade
unions have become somewhat progressive despite obstacles of
every kind. The frowns of capitalists, the flattery of politicians,
the dishonesty and cupidity of members, and the open hostility
of some who call themselves socialists are incidents that have
been encountered during the march forward. These thorns in
the pathway have, of course, had a discouraging effect at times,
but the enmity and opposition has likewise had a tendency to
quicken the pace of the labor army and make it more compact
and disciplined.
To mention the various national, state and local unions that
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TRADES UNIONS AND SOCIALISM 51
have joined the progressive labor forces, and to quote from their
preambles, constitutions and resolutions, would only tend to
weary the reader, and, therefore, it is only necessary at this time
to recall a little recent history as proof that organized labor is
moving forward. At the Detroit convention of the American
Federation of Labor, last December, resolutions were adopted
recommending "that the various central and local bodies of labor
in the United States take steps to use their ballots, their political
power, an independent lines, as enunciated in the declaration of
principles of the American Federation of Labor." This action
was taken after it was shown that lobbying for labor laws in
Congress and State Legislatures accomplished little if anything.
Some of the most influential delegates admitted the logic of the
socialist position and predicted that the time is rapidly approach-
ing when a plain declaration for Socialism can be made without
injuring the unions by frightening the ignorant members, who
are nevertheless necessary in carrying on economic struggles.
The Federation took even a more advanced position, declaring
that the trusts and capitalistic combinations are the natural
product of the capitalist system, and that they cannot be de-
stroyed by enacting laws against them. The rank and file is
warned to pay no heed to political demagogues who promise to
disrupt the capitalistic combines, lest the laws will be used to
break up unions, and the convention went on record as calling
upon "trade unionists of the United States, and workingmen
generally, to study the development of trusts and monopolies
with a view to nationalizing the same."
This, call practically places the A. F. of L. in the position of
endorsing the collective ownership of the means of production.
It opens the door to socialism.
The writer is firmly of the opinion that the Federation and
many national unions would have declared in favor of socialism
some years ago if certain fanatical leaders, so-called, had not
kept up a running fire against trade unions, and made loud
boasts and bluffs of disrupting the "pure and simple'' organiza-
tions. Ten years ago one "leader" made the ridiculous asser-
tion in the convention in the same city that "we will cram social-
ism down your throats!" That ill-advised and nonsensical threat
has proven costly. Just as one can drive a horse to a trough but
cannot force him to drink, so the average self-respecting human
being will resist the attempt of any one to "cram" anything down
his throat. Had there been some little diplomacy used, had an
honest and persistent and tolerant effort been made to educate
the workers, the American labor movement would now undoubt-
edly be abreast of the European movement.
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62 INTERNA TTONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
However, we profit by the mistakes that are made, and I am
convinced that since the overthrowal of bossism in the socialist
movement, and the sincere acknowledgment that was made by
the Rochester convention of the S. L. P. that errors had been
committed, a better understanding will be had between the so-
cialists and trade unionists of this country. Indeed, the political
and economic organizations of the working class are drifting to-
gether, and as the development of labor-saving macinery and
capitalistic combines must go on, the new socialist movement
will naturally gain strength and support from the trade union
forces.
M . S\ Hayes.
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EDITORIAL
SALUTATORY.
It was a little over fifty years ago when the economic develop-
ment of that time caused the vague longings for freedom that had
ever pervaded the minds of the workers, to take form in what has
come to be known as modern or scientific socialism in distinction
from the old or Utopian socialism. These doctrines, once formu-
lated, spread in the wake of the capitalism that gave them birth
until today they are geographically as universal as the "world
market" of modern commercialism, while on the intellectual side
there is no sphere of human thought exempt from their influence.
American life and society has been one of the last to be affect-
ed. ^ Owing to the almost marvelous extent of its natural oppor-
tunities, it was many years before man's cupidity could neutralize
Nature's bounty and sufficiently monopolize the sources of ex-
istence to create a dependent class. But at last the seemingly
boundless prairies, exhaustless mines and limitless forests were
divided up as private property among the class of owners. When
this had been accomplished there was nothing left for those to
do who had not shared in this first distribution of booty but to sell
themselves into wage slavery to the owning class. Then when
the proletariat and the bourgeoisie with the class antagonisms and
wage slavery had appeared socialism began to grow and develop.
The ideological system of socialism had been here long before
Carl Marx was for many years the European correspondent of
the New York Tribune, and the International Workingmen's As-
sociation had its headquarters in New York for some years prior
to its final dissolution. More significant yet, during all the years
that capitalism was welcoming in the name of freedom the work-
ers of every land who could be induced to come here and assist
in forcing down the price of labor power, there were many of the
revolutionary exiles of Europe who sought a refuge in America,
and brought with them the ideas for which they had suffered at
home. In all too many cases it must be admitted that those who
had been sufferers for the cause of labor at home forgot their
principles when they felt the lessening of the economic pressure
and thousands will be found this fall shouting in the ranks of the
Democratic and Republican parties who once marched beneath
the red flag of socialism in their native countries.
The few who did not forget their early principles formed little
socialist clubs in a few great cities and for many years were as
68
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54 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
"voices crying in the wilderness'' of American capitalism. The
self-confident Yankee laughed them to scorn and sneered at their
"foreign doctrines." At last there came a time when the proph-
ecies of these' early apostles of socialism were realized. The
American laborer began to himself feel the suffering that has
ever been the lot of the proletarian. Shut out from soil and fac-
tory he was made conscious of his enslaved condition.
Then it was that socialism began to grow. Unfortunately we
were in the beginning too full of our own conceit to learn from
the experience of others. Instead of accepting the time-tried doc-
trines which already had a literature of thousands of volumes,
American socialists must perforce walk the whole way from the
wildest Utopian nonsense to the developed science. So it has
came about that American socialist literature has been a byword
and a laughing stock among the socialists of other nations. The
most ridiculous books, based upon long exploded errors, have
been hailed here as the gospel of a new redemption and been
circulated almost by the millions.
But economic development has already forced economic theory
to develope beyond this stage and the socialists of America are
now beginning to seriously and intelligently study industrial
problems. The result has been that there has been a decided im-
provement in the character of the literature on socialist questions.
There is less of the attitude of absolute certainty that whatever is
American is prima facia better than anything imported. There is
now a willingness to examine into what is going on in other
countries and translations are rapidly being made of the leading
socialist works of other languages.
Indeed so far has this now gone that there are some signs of what
might be called a reaction, in so far that there is a feeling of the
inadequacy of translated works for use among American laborers.
Socialism is but the philosophy of capitalist development and
since it is an undisputed fact that American capitalism is further
advanced and more clearly developed than that of any other na-
tion the American socialist may be pardoned if he believes that
that capitalism should in time produce the most clear cut and de-
veloped socialism. At the very least he knows that illustrations
drawn from American experience need be no less scientific and
are much more effective for propaganda than those drawn from
European experience.
Under these circumstances it is felt that the time is now here
when the American socialist movement needs and is able to main-
tain a magazine of scientific socialism, and the International So-
cialist Review has been established to fill that need. It will at
all times have three principal objects in view. In the first place
we shall seek to counteract the sentimental Utopianism that has
so long characterized the American movement and give it a dig-
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EDITORIAL W
nity and accuracy worthy of the position it is destined to attain in
the world wide advance toward the co-operative commonwealth. ,
In the second place we shall endeavor to keep our readers in
touch yith the socialist movements in other countries, and
through the very able corps of foreign socialist writers and think-
ers who have kindly agreed to contribute to this end, bring to-
gether each month the work and opinions of the best thought of
the world on the philosophy of socialism. Finally, but perhaps
most important of all, we shall aim to secure the interpretation of
American social conditions in the light of socialist philosophy by
the socialists of this country. To do this we invite the co-opera-
tion of all who feel that they have some contribution to offer to
this end. While the editorial policy of the "Review" will be in
accordance with the principles now universally accepted by the
socialists of the world of independent political action by the labor-
ers upon the basis of a struggle of classes with divergent material
interests, with the ultimate object of securing the common own-
ership by such laborers of the means of production and distribu-
tion, nevertheless our columns will be open at all times, as far as
space will permit to intelligent students of social questions
whether agreeing with this position or not.
EXPANSION AND THE CHINESE QUESTION.
It is a characteristic of capitalism, which it shares with all life,
that it must grow or die. Resting upon the exploitation of the
producing classes, who continuously receive little more than their
subsistence, the improvement of productive processes brings to
the ruling possessing classes an ever larger mass of unearned
products. These cannot be resold to the laborers who produced
them. Hence a market is sought among a less highly developed
society, where these finished products can be exchanged for raw
material. Because England has been fairly successful in this
policy she has become the "workshop of the world," and by a
careful manipulation of her working class at home and her mar-
kets abroad has been able to maintain a semblance of local tran-
quility while promoting "civilization ,, in other lands.
Germany's capitalist class trained her workers in her marvelous
system of technical schools until they were able to supply their
employers with a surplus of goods for this same purpose, and Ger-
many, with Italy, Belgium, France and Austria sought to carry
the "torch of civilization ,, into those places where cheap raw ma-
terial could be obtained for the goods her workers had created
for their employers. No sooner was Russia awakened from her
mediaeval slumber than her ruling class also discovered that while
the condition of the laborers remained the same they were able
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56 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
to create much more wealth for their masters than ever before
and she too started out to hawk the wares of her ruling class
among the less developed people of Northern Asia. Japan, with
that rapidity of imitation that has ever distinguished her as a
nation and as a people, "caught on" in remarkably short time.
Almost before the observer had time to realize that feudalism
was going, fully developed capitalism was enthroned and a policy
of isolation in foreign affairs had been transformed into one of
"imperialism and expansion. ,,
Up until a very short time America had seemed to present the
appearance of an exception to this rule. While it was as fully
developed in capitalism as any nation in the world it had always
preached the doctrine of non-intervention in foreign politics. But
a closer examination reveals the fact that this is one of those ex-
ceptions that obey the rule in its closest detail. The capitalists
of America have always had, in the Western frontier, an almost
exhaustless "foreign market," where finished products could be
exchanged for raw materials in the same way as in any far off
savage land. But this situation came to an end. The frontier
disappeared beneath a series of those waves of desperate expro-
priated humanity that are ever rolling across the troubled sea of
modern capitalism. All the world now knows what followed. The
traditions having served their purpose were now cast aside and
America started upon her policy of imperialism.
This gave a new appearance to the whole international situa-
tion. To understand the "foreign policies" of the great capitalists
of today take a Mercators Projection of the world and study it
carefully. Note, not the "thin red line," but the great blood-
stained band that marks the lands now in the grip of English
capitalism. Note how the Sahara is girt round with a vari-colored
girdle of the various European possessions. It will soon be seen
that the "hunting grounds'* of the capitalists of the future must
be confined to a very limited area.
Indeed there is but one great expanse of territory on the planet
not yet invaded. Surrounded by impassable mountain chains and
protected by a fanatical waH of custom the great Chinese empire
has managed up to the present time to repel the assault of this
world empire of exploitation.
But this can continue no longer. The great capitalist nations
of the world are gathering for the final feast. China offers an
opportunity for further exploitation and that is the only point
that will receive any consideration. The hands of the possessing
class of the world are laden with plunder taken from their wage-
slaves at home, which must be disposed of if wage slavery and
exploitation are to continue.
Turn again to the map and notice how this buzzard flock ^re
gathering for their feast. At the North the Russian bear is draw-
ing ever closer. Crowding in between him and his proposed
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDITORIAL 57
prey is little Japan, grown bold and brave because of her recent
admittance to the robber band. British India on the Southwest
is watching British warships on the East for the signal that the
time has come to spring. France and Italy at the South stand
watching with Germany and Austria like vultures round a corpse
the hyenas are devouring, hoping that in the confusion of the
scramble some morsels may fall to them.
This was the situation a year ago. But now another has been
added to the pack that is gathering for its unsavory feast. Just
off the Southeastern coast of China there lies a group of islands
known as the Philippines. Is it necessary to explain further how
it "just happened'' that when the Maine blew up in Havana har-
bor Admiral Dewey and the American fleet were in the only port
on the entire globe where, when England should order them out,
their "only hope" would be to take the Philippines.
The Morgans, the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers were al-
ready engaged in connection with a European syndicate in
"civilizing'' China but they needed "their government" near at
hand to "protect the rights of private property" when the time
should come to strike.
The question was now only of the time to move. Russia had
thrown an iron band across a continent to fasten her hold at the
North. She had secretly brought in large bodies of troops and
was eager to strike. But America and England were busy on
other plundering expeditions and could not leave at once.
America finished first but was not willing that the feast should
begin until England was ready. Russia grew impatient and
showed signs of attacking the meal before the other guests
arrived. Fortunately the United States recalled some old claims
against Turkey and. began to press them with a great excess of
bluster. Russia took the hint and sat down and waited.
Then Pretoria fell and England was free to move. The time
had come to strike.
Meanwhile internal affairs in China were working to the same
end. Two parties had appeared. One of these was beginning
to feel the influence of capitalism and had called itself the "re-
form" party. It was led by the young emperor and strengthened
by foreign intrigue. Missionaries, railroads, telegraphs, and
opium traders assisted in fomenting discord under pretense of in-
troducing "civilization." Finally this led to open hostilities. The
"Boxers'' appeared. What would have happened had not this
particular organization acted it is impossible to say. It might
have taken a few weeks or months longer before some other
means would have been found to excuse the entrance of. foreign
troops.
One phase of the result cannot be in doubt for one moment.
The Chinese empire will be thrown open to capitalism. Just
how much of a resistance they will be able to make no one can
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58 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
possibly tell. Whether they will prove to be the same homoge-
neous, jelly-like social organization that offered practically no
resistance to the march of European troops in 1857 or whether
capitalism has not yet been able to differentiate, organize and
strengthen this organism until it can to some degree wield the
enormous strength it possesses no man at the present time is able
to fortell. But the ultimate result as to China is certain, the rela-
tions which the capitalist nations of the world will play in the
matter is still a difficult one to foretell.
A glance at the makeup of the predatory band may throw a
little light on the situation. They fail at once into two classes
according to the stage of capitalist development attained. On the
one side is a group headed by the United States and closely fol-
lowed by England and Japan who have run the full gamut of
capitalism. The remaining nations headed by Russia as least de-
veloped in concentrated capitalism form another group which,
while united on the general principle of capitalism still have some-
what divergent interests from the group first mentioned in mat-
ters of detail. They are in much the same position as the small
shops and great department stores of a great city. All agree
that private property and individual ownership and competition
are absolutely necessary for the continuance of "civilization," but
when it comes to the application and practical working out of
those principles the little shops are forced into a life and death
struggle with the department stores. Following out this line of
thought it is safe to say that when fight comes upon the division
of the plunder after the crushing of China the contending forces
will be lined up much as here suggested.
THE CHICAGO AND ST. LOUIS STRIKES.
Chicago and St. Louis have been the storm centers of the labor
world during the month just past. The lockout in(the Chicago
building trades began Feb. 5th, and at the present writ-
ing remains unsettled. For number of days labor and dollars of
money lost, industry blocked and interests involved it already
ranks among the greatest of the contests of labor, being only ex-
ceeded in these regards by one or two other great struggles. This
whole contest will be thoroughly treated in our next number by a
socialist writer who from the very beginning has had a better
opportunity to see and understand all its phases than any other
single person, and at the present time we shall confine ourselves
to a few salient facts and observations.
At the beginning there were various points of contention, but
as time passed these all gave way to one main point of contention,
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDITORIAL 59
the question of the principle of federated trades. All the build-
ing trades of Chicago are federated for such common action as
may be thought necessary in the Building Trades Council. The
contractors insist that this body disband as a condition to any
settlement whatever.
This is, of course, an absolutely impossible condition for the
laborers, the concession of which would not be a settlement at all,
but a crushing defeat. It would mean the setting back of labor
one step in the long upward struggle of centuries; the aban-
donment of one vantage point gained at terrible cost. The in-
dividual union is almost if not auite as helpless in the face of the
intensely concentrated capital of today as was the individual work-
man before the capitalist employer of a generation ago. This
was especially emphasized in the Chicago struggle as the employ-
ers were all united in a Central Contractors' Council. The fact
that the contractors never dreamed of dissolving their central
body proved the purely class nature of their demand and showed
that the dispute was one that could be settled only by a test of
strength.
Unfortunately there was one fact that gave apparent strength
to this demand. Owing to the "pure and simple'' position of the
American trade unions, all labor politics are debarred, and Na-
ture evidently abhorring a political as well as a physical vacuum,
capitalist politics invariably dominate those unions pretending to
keep themselves entirely free of politics. So it must be admit-
ted that some Democratic and Republican stool pigeons of a most
despicable character had gained entrance to the Building Trades
Council. Here again it must not be overlooked that it was the
contractors' class who were responsible for these men and who
could alone gain by their presence within the labor organizations.
The entire insincerity of the contractors' position was shown when
the question was raised as to whether they would consent to a
reorganization and the substitution of other men for these objec-
tionable characters. To this they refused to listen and insisted
upon the unconditional dissolution of the federal body. So the
struggle has gone on up to the present time. One of the most
interesting phases of the strike has been the attitudes taken by the
city government. Carter Harrison, the present mayor of Chi-
cago, has always posed as the "friend of the workingmen" and
it has been customary for the unions to endorse the candidates
upon the Democratic ticket. Indeed so far had this gone that
many of the unions were looked upon as practically Democratic
organizations.
Many of the more influential and active trades-union leaders
were given places in the Harrison administration. The result of
all this was that politically the entire union movement of Chicago
was debauched by the influence of capitalist politics. To be sure
it was necessary for the Democratic politicians, if they wished to
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60 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
maintain their hold to keep up a pretense of friendliness to the
laborers — but this never meant that anything substantial should
be granted.
During the early portion of the strike this pretense of friendli-
ness was kept up. The mayor even went so far as allow the
police force to overlook cases of assault on non-union men. But
as the contest continued the lines of the class struggle became
more evident. The press soon arrayed itself with the employers
and began to send out the most exaggerated stories of the "out-
rages ,, being perpetrated by the strikers and to demand that the
police be used to annoy the pickets. For a time the mayor and
city administration was still able to preserve an appearance of un-
fairness. Then the stories of violence multiplied and at last open
threats were made that the militia would be brought in. Mayor
Harrison saw that it was time to move. When he once started he
made a "clean break'' with all pretensions of friendliness for the
unions. Almost the first act was to organize a parade of the police
force of the city, accompanied very conspicuously with the ma-
chine guns which are owned by the city to be used in "case of
riot," which has long ago come to mean in case laborers strike.
This parade went entirely out of the route usually taken by
parades in this city in order to pass the headquarters of the trade-
unions. Then there began to be a "cleaning out*' of those labor
leaders, who, as office holders in the municipal government had
acted as the stool pigeons to keep the laborers in line politically.
Finally Harrison issued his now famous order to the police jus-
tices that when any union man should be brought before them
for any offense connected with the strike the justices should "give
them the limit" in the way of punishment.
Various efforts have been made in the way of reconciliation
and a great deal of nonsense talked about bringing in "the pub-
lic'ias an impartial arbiter. It is needless to say that all of these
attempts failed as it was soon discovered, as the socialist had
told them from the beginning, that the "public" is composed of
two parties with divergent interests and in short, that the class
struggle was a fact and not a theory.
Another delusion which is very prevalent among those who dis-
cuss socialism in connection with the strike is that the disorders
that have accompanied the present movement and especially the
errors that have been committed by the trade-union officials in
some way argues against socialism; and it is a favorite bourgeois
reply to socialist arguments to relate a string of real and imagi-
nary abuses committed by the Building Trades Council with the
air that if this indictment could only be made strong enough the
socialist position would be overthrown. They fail to understand
that what the socialist is arguing against is the conditions that
render necessary such conflicts with all the abuses found
on either si<Je. That violence is an inevitable acorn-
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
. EDITORIAL 61
paniment of strikes is something that the socialist saw
long ago, and that such violence must invariably mili-
tate to the disadvantage of the laborers is a story that
he has well-nigh grown tiredl of telling, but this does not
mean that he believes that the laborer should meekly allow him-
self to be reduced to a state of unbearable slavery but simply that
the manner of fighting must be transformed and that the scene of
conflict must be changed to the political field, with the object,
not simply of gaining a single point in a continuous battle, but
of ending the whole war with one decisive victory.
The St. Louis street car strike, like the one just described,
started with various subjects of dispute and soon narrowed down
to a question of the recognition of the right of the men to act to-
gether. From the beginning this strike was marked with acts of
violence. However much this may be deplored the fact remains
that so long as capital exists it is impossible for any large strike
to continue for any length of time without the accompaniment of
violence. This is especially true when lines of transportation are
concerned. When non-union men are so conspicuously engaged
in treason to their class as they must be when they run street cars
or railroad trains in time of strike it would require a stage of
human development far above that of capitalism to produce the
sort of human beings that will stand idly by and see their means
of living taken away and not resort to violence. But before com-
menting further on the subject of violence during strikes a few
observations are necessary. In the first place it is well to remem-
ber that the press is in the control of the present ruling capitalist
class and always exaggerates any violence that may take place
and in a great many instances, notably during the great railroad
strike of 1894, manufactures out of whole cloth long and elaborate
stories of acts of violence that never occurred at all. This in itself
is sufficient proof of which class it is that deserves violence, "The
wish is father to the thought."
It must also be remembered that in every great city capitalism
has created a class of desperate despairing human beings who,
while an essential product of our present civilization are forced
to prey upon it to live. These denizens of the slums, the "lumpen
proletariat," the criminal classes, are the natural allies of the capi-
talist class and in every contest between the employing and the
employed class, whether on the economic, political or military
field, they are of the greatest assistance to the capitalists. These
were the ones who at St. Louis committed the outrages, so far
as such outrages actually existed, upon helpless women and de-
fenseless men.
In its attempts to put down these outrages the uselessness and
injustice of the capitalist state even to perform its function as a
"preserver of law and order," a "Politzei Staat," was brought into
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62 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
full prominence. Not only were they unable to reach and punish
the actual perpetrators but when they finally did attempt to punish
any one for these outrages, their vengeance fell upon three little
girls, twelve and fourteen years of age, who were sentenced to
imprisonment for two years. These were almost the only persons
reached and punished by the regularly constituted machinery of
the law during, what, if we are to believe some of the capitalist •
press of this country was practically a two weeks reign of terror.
It might be said in this connection that the children so punished
had a long "bill of wrongs'' against the society that made them
the inmates of a penal institution. Two of them were half-orphans
and the father of one of these had been rendered a helpless crip-
ple with but one leg by an accident such as our modern imfois-
trialism compels millions of laborers to risk every day of their
lives. None of them had received any opportunities of education
worthy of the name and all were working at the disgusting, de-
grading, murderous occupation of tobacco stripping at wages of
one, two and three dollars a week respectively.
There were other peculiar and interesting features developed
during the progress of the contest. The mayor belonged to one
political party while the state government was controlled by the
other, and it so happened that St. Louis is in the ridiculous situ-
ation that is so common in Europe but rare here, in that its police
are under state control.
Thus it was possible to "play politics" and pretend to cater to
the laborers while leaving capitalist interests intact. The state
authorities declared on the side of the laborers and refused to use
the police as "efficiently" as the employers wished, while the gov-
ernor refused to call out the state troops.
So it became necessary for some other action to be taken, and
a "posse comitates*' was formed under the direction of the sheriff.
Warrants were issued for 2,500 "good citizens'* to take up arms
for the preservation of peace. They were given repeating shot
guns and sent out to patrol the city. The result was easy to see.
On the tenth of June a small boy threw a stone at a passing car.
Immediately afterward a revolver shot was heard. Who fired it or
at what no one now pretends to know. At any rate he hit no one.
But this shot was taken as a signal for the deputies to empty their
murderous weapons into a street full of people. Three strikers
and one bystander were killed and seven other persons wounded.
By any standard of judgment save that of capitalist expediency
this was murder.
From then on the history of the strike is short. The men were
gradually crushed to one side and the cars are being operated by
non-union labor. In the meantime the boycott has been tried as
it was in Cleveland, Brooklyn, and other cities wherever there
have been street car strikes. In this respect the St. Louis strike
has duplicated the experience of those cities. There has been
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDITORIAL 68
the same fierce denunciation and persecution of those who dared
to violate the boycott, the same attempt to extend its influence
secondarily by boycotting all those who had any connection with
those who rode on the street cars, the same attempt at competi-
tion with other vehicles and in all probability the future will see
the same gradual fizzle in the end.
It is a slow and painful way to learn but it seems that it is only
through repeated experiences of this sort that the laborers can be
brought to realize that on the economic ground they are fighting
according to rules laid down by their opponents and on ground
of their enemy's choosing.
Le Laboureur, the organ of the Belgian socialists for work
among the farmers, says of the late elections, "The results of the
elections of the 27th of May shows a "frightful increase'' (from the
clerical point of view) of our ideas among the rural population.
The Walloon agricultural districts distinguish themselves espe-
cially by the great increase in the number of socialist votes ob-
tained by the socialist candidates in comparison with the figures of
the general elections of 1804."
Abbe Daens, the leader of the Christian Socialists of Belgium,
has decided to issue a Flemish Socialist daily to be sold at two-
fifths of a cent per number and called "Le Democrate Chretien.''
Full returns have not as yet been received regarding the Italian
elections but the following is the result of the first ballot as pub-
lished in Le Peuple of Brussels:
Ministers (Doctrinaires) 250
Constitutional Opposition 120
Radicals 30
Republicans 30
Socialists 30
In the former house the socialists had only thirteen seats so this
means that they have more than doubled their strength. The po-
sition of the ministry is even more precarious than before.
A communication has been received from Dr. Allessandro
Schivi too late for publication in this issue, but which will appear
in the August number, giving full details of the Italian elections.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
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Digitized by VjOOQ IC
T25 INTERNATIONAL
SOCIALIST REVIEW
Vol. I AUGUST, 1900 No. 2
CHICAGO LOCKOUT.
A striking picture of American social and economic organiza-
tion is presented in the present situation within the building
trades of Chicago. The strong tendency of the social evolution
in America has been a pronounced individualism. To leave to
each individual or to each organization of individuals to direct
its own affairs untrammeled by any regard for the interests of
other organisms has been the first axiom of our philosophy. In
spite, however, of this conscious avowal, the conditions of our
economic and industrial growth have forced many of these war-
ring individual interests into harmonious co-operation. The
fierceness of the individual competition has necessitated co-opera-
tion. But this co-operation has been forced upon us in spite of
our avowed intention to fight our battles on individual grounds.
Chicago has now for nearly six months been suffering from an
acute labor controversy. Two organizations have opposed each
other with bitter animosity. Thousands of employers have de-
plored their idle capital and tens of thousands of laborers have
idly walked the streets. Families and dependents have suffered
and starved. Hosts of small shopkeepers have anxiously watched
their growing credit accounts, trade in general has been disturbed.
Buildings in all states of construction have been left unfinished —
those whose skeletons awe the wondering passer-by, those on
the architects' plans, and those in the minds of the willing owner.
Industries dependent upon new shop accommodations must wait
better opportunities and either, take their labor force away from
Chicago or compel it to swell Hie army of unemployed. All
classes have suffered. But here are two parties that are unable
to adjust their differences. Because of this inability of the two
principal parties, the dependent industries, the powerless public,
must suffer without being allowed to send representatives to the
settlement or having their voices heard, although they also are
parties in the effects of the struggle. But our social philosophy
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66 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
compels us to leave the original contestants alone and bear our
own discomforts as patiently as we may.
There is, however, an advantage in this attitude of laissez-faire.
The past shows that the progressive steps of evolution have been
taken under this struggle between social or economic classes.
The retardation in the social development of Continental Europe
is due to the forcible interference of the government to suppress
any serious difference between the industrial factors. This in-
terference may have given industrial peace; but this peace is only
equivalent to social stagnation, because the life-impulse of the
working classes to rise to an equal opportunity and development
to the other classes has been stifled by the intolerant attitude of
the powers above. In the United States the rapidity of our indus-
trial and social development is largely due to the wide latitude
the various classes have had for the settlement of their differ-
ences. In the industrial sphere this method is very expensive,
but let us have it until experience has taught us a better way to
remove the causes of friction.
New Zealand has taken a step ahead of us in its insistence
upon compulsory arbitration of all labor disputes, but there the
working classes have gained such an influence in the government
that they know their interests will receive fair treatment by the
Arbitration Board.
On the other hand, the necessities created by material develop-
ment baffle our philosophical preconceptions. Men are forced
to co-operate. Not long ago the formation of labor unions was
universally decried as destructive of individual liberty, and we
still hear the echoes of the cry. Now, not omly the laborers in
individual trades unite, but unions engaged in the same industry
affiliate into central organizations. The Building Trades Coun-
cil of Chicago embraces every trade and occupation that has any-
thing to do with the erection of a building. Delegates from the
various unions meet in a central council. This council elects
an Executive Board, which, with the Board of Business Agents,
administers the affairs of the Council. All important questions
are referred back through the delegates to the various unions
for suggestion or ratification. But the tendency to co-operation
does not end here. Many of the important unions of Chicago
are branches of national organization, as the Carpenters and Join-
ers, Plumbers, etc.
The Building Trades Council of Chicago is only one of similar
councils existing in almost every large city of the United States,
with whom it is more or less closely affiliated. In the same man-
ner the laborers engaged in manufacturing the materials of which
a building is composed have organized their unions into a cen-
tral council, the Building Material Council, and these two coun-
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
CHICAGO L0CK0U1 67
cils in the past years have very closely allied their interests. If
we, then, remember that the Building Trades Co»ncil is also a
part of the American Federation of Labor, with whom nearly all
organized labor is affiliated, we may have a conception of the tre-
mendous strength that may be concentrated into that organiza-
tion, which for the time being is attacked by the employing cap-
italists. It is, of course, true that these affiliations of such large
bodies cannot assert as formidable a strength in an actual con-
flict as the appearance of number would indicate, because labor
has not yet been educated up to the highest sense of solidarity
or conception of its power; but any one who is at all familiar with
the inside operations of these bodies knows the readiness with
which labor has responded to appeals for financial help. It is
only the contributions of funds from unions all over the country
that has sustained the locked-out men in Chicago in their strug-
gle. The relation between the Building Material Council and the
Building Trades Council (during the time past) in refusing to
handle material not bearing the proper label, or striking for a
manufacturer that helped an unfair contractor, has assisted both
these councils to attain their present importance in the labor
market.
It is very significant of how much more recent date any or-
ganization of the employers have been brought about. Lacking
the incentive of an ever present struggle for mere existence, the
employers have been satisfied with the power that capital itself
gives. But competition among employers wiH bring about or-
ganization just as resistlessly as competition among the men. We
have the same relentless formation of trusts among the building
contractors of Chicago as is characteristic of all other industry:
Consolidation of related interests, eliminative waste and unnec-
essary factors.
Organizations of contractors of the same line of business have
existed for years, as the Chicago Masons' & Builders' Associa-
tion, Master Plumbers' Association, Chicago Painters' Associa-
tion, etc. Some of these organizations have strengthened effec-
tually their memberships by making corresponding labor organi-
zations agree not to work for contractors outside the organiza-
tion. They have also made stipulations with the dealers in supply
whereby a member of the organization has received a rebate in the
purchase of materials, which an outsider could not secure. But
still the field was too crowded. Chicago is filled with small con-
tractors whose capital or connections will not allow them to take
large contracts but who compensate themselves by the numerous
smaller jobs. These smaller men have as a rule kept themselves
outside of all organizations, partly because they have lacked time
to take in a broad view of business policy, as they must do their
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
68 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
own superintendency, partly because they prefer to pick up any
job they can find, untrammeled by agreements either with unions
or their own association. A contractor who had closely followed
the whole movement stated that in 1899 fully 70 per cent of the
work done in Chicago had been done by men outside the con-
tractors' organizations. The profits that are divided among a
number of men would give handsome incomes to a few contract-
tors if these others could be eliminated, and still not bring any
detriment to the trade as a whole. Seeing how the whole ten-
dency in our industrial development is to give the control and
direction of production into a few hands, it is impossible to be-
lieve that this tendency should not reflect itself in the minds of
one most daring and enterprising contractor.
But any central organization was not affected until the spring
of 1899, when the Building Contractors' Council came into exist-
ence, although its real activity did not show itself until fall. Vig-
orous measures were employed to induce the independent con-
tractors to fall into line, the most effective being the difficulty of
the independent contractor to secure materials unless he could
prove a good standing with his association. In all this struggle
the material dealers have proven themselves the staunchest friends
of the Contractors' Council. An abundance of testimony goes to
show that they have used every kind of recrimination against in-
dependent contractors, even absolutely refusing to sell to men
who persisted in employing union labor. Even in their ranks the
superiority of the large manufacturer over the small shows itself.
By collusion with the stronger contractors, a few of the dealers
and manufacturers of materials could force the weaker men to
the wall and have the whole field to themselves. The dealings
of the Central Supply Association, both in regard to the fixing
of prices and in the matter of free competition, presents the most
interesting study to any student of Political Economy. After
the fight was on, no man who employed union labor could buy
building material; or, if he succeeded at all, by being in every way
harassed by those who aspired to the monopoly of this trade.
A very important factor in building is, of course, the architect.
The blessings of unionism were clearly perceived by the archi-
tects when they formed the Chicago Architects' Business As-
sociation, which association they strengthened by inducing the
state legislature to pass a State License Law for architects. Ear-
ly in the struggle they passed resolutions sympathetic to the con-
tractors and pledging their efforts to prevent outside contractors
from taking contracts already held by members of the Con-
tractors' Council.
Before going into an analysis of the lockout itself, it is neces-
sary to bear another circumstance in mind. After the trade de-
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CHICAGO LOCKOUT 60
pression in 'g6-'97 the prices of materials began to rise. A rise
in prices will not generally prevent industrial activity, as it may
only be a sign of advancing prosperity, but the phenomenal ad-
vance during '99 of from 100 to 300 per cent, in the cost of ma-
terial could scarcely find a corresponding willingness in pros-
pective builders. In the nature of things, such an enormous in-
crease could not be expected to continue forever, and the action
of some of the noted captains of industry in closing mills and
otherwise reducing production, while figures were at this profita-
ble level, were only a sure indication that prices had already
reached the top-notch and were expected to start upon the de-
clining plane. If one also follows the price quotations in the
reputable trade journals, one will find that the climax had been
reached in the end of March or beginning of April. It is only
reasonable to suppose that if conditions favored a suspension of
building operations while the reign of excessive prices lasted
and building could be resumed when the market was more
favorable to profitable buying, that this suspension would be
hailed with eagerness. It is impossible to reject this element
in our attempt to understand the present situation.
It is only to be expected that a great deal of friction must have
existed between two bodies of such strength as the labor unions
and master associations possessed. Harmonious relations be-
tween employer and employes, with interests so conflicting:,
can only be found where one of the parties is too weak to assert
itself. Usually labor has to adapt itself to the conditions stip-
ulated by the employer, but the building trades have succeeded
in representing their demands in the agreements with the con-
tractors. This they have succeeded in doing through the soli-
darity attained by the central council. Many of the individual
unions have always been very strong because they have enrolled
in their numbers every available working-man. Others, espe-
cially the laborers and more unskilled men, would never have
been able to stand alone. But behind every individual agree-
ment stood the combined force of the Building Trades' Council,
and that compelled the contractor to give terms which he would
not have done if he had only single unions to deal with. The
Building Trades' Council simply usurped the power of capital-
ism. If a Rockefeller fights a small recalcitrant dealer with the
combined force of his immense capital, that is business. But if
the Building Trades employ the same tactics in self-defense, it
is overturning of society. It is not to be expected that the
Building Trades' Council would always use this power with the
utmost discretion and discernment. Errors have often been
committed. The quarrel between different unions as to jurisdic-
tion over a certain class of work ought not to interrupt the work
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70 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIS7 REVIEW
of other unions. The refusal to handle labor-saving machinery
can easily be understood as an attempt to protect present work-
ers. But the introduction of this machinery is a pill, however
hard, that the working-man under present conditions must swal-
low, for the benefit that the saving gives to society as a whole.
Mistakes of judgment over petty controversies between con-
tractor and men have been the cause of stagnation of work. We
are so accustomed to the overbearing treatment of men by em-
ployers that we accept that as the order of nature. When the
men are able to turn the tables, even one who has not the least
to do with the matter cries out in indignaion. On the other
side, actions of the contractors which the unions have considered
a breach of existing contracts have caused added friction and
disturbance of work. The great misfortune throughout this
whole matter has been the lack of a mediation board before which
these grievances could be adjusted. Against any infringement
on their rights the men have retaliated bv a strike. Inasmuch
as an attack on one union means an attack on all, work has
been suspended many times, not only by the union originally in-
volved, but by all unions on that same building, and at times on
other buildings as well. This, of course, has been very harass-
ing, not only to the first contractor, but to all contractors and
owners who themselves may have had nothing to do with the
original grievance. The Building Trades' Council had an ef-
fective means by which to settle all grievances, and it is not to
be wondered at that the laboring men, with the sense of past
silently-endured sufferings, should use this weapon effectively,
and even at times unreasonably. The solidarity of resistance
in labor brought about solidarity of suffering among the con-
tractors.
When, therefore, the Building Contractors' Council consid-
ered themselves strong enough to fight the consolidated strength
of the unions, it did not await the expiration of existing agree-
ments, but precipitated the struggle by a general lockout, Feb.
The bones of contention are briefly stated in the following
resolutions adopted at a meeting of the Building Contractors'
Council, held Nov. 17, 1900: That the trades represented in the
Building Contractors' Council shall not recognize,
1st. Any limitation as to the amount of work a man shall per-
form during his working day.
2d. Any restriction in the use of machinery.
3d. The right of any person to interfere with the workman
during hours.
4th. The sympathetic strike.
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CHICAGO L0CK0U1 71
5th. Restriction in the use of manufactured material, except
prison made.
6th. The right of the unions to prohibit the employment of ap-
prentices.
All of these counts, except the fourth, are of minor impor-
tance and have been used mostly for oratorical effect. All of them
—except the fourth — have been considered by the unions. In
regard to the second, the explanation has been given that of the
33 trades affiliated with the Building Trades' Council only one —
the stonecutters — have ever objected to the use of machinery.
The reason, as explained by themselves, is that out of 75 cut-
stone contractors in the city only about 15 have machinery.
These 15 want to crush the other 60 out of existence.
The fourth count is the real bone of contention. It is re-
stated in a circular of the contractors, dated April 30, 1900:
"That the agreement shall only become operative when the union
withdraws from the Building Trades' Council and agrees not to
become affiliated with any organization of a like character dur-
ing the life of the agreement."
The sympathetic strike is the raison d'etre of the Building
Trades Council. It has been the means of either punishing the
contractor or to compel him to conform to the will of the unions.
Sometimes the punishment has taken the form of a fine, with the
threat of a strike if the money is not forthcoming. The agent
of the Building Trades Council is the Business Agent of the
union. The personality of this agent has also been made a
factor in the struggle. The contractors have been vehement in
their denunciations of the Business Agent, or Walking Delegate.
The very relation between employer and employe makes it nec-
essary that the representative of the latter should be a persona non
grata to the former, especially if he is able to back up his de-
mands. There is no doubt that the business agent has, in many
instances, been lacking in those personal qualities of patience and
adroitness that smooth the relations between business men. The
stories of bribe-giving and bribe-taking that have been occasion-
ally mentioned are just as disgraceful to the one party as to the
other.
The demand for the abolition of the Building Trades Council
has been persistent with the contractors. They have gone so
far in their hostility against the opposing council that they have
even refused to treat directly with it. In their eyes it has been
"unreliable and unworthy. ,J Any attempt of reconciliation or ar-
bitration made by any third party has been constantly rejected,
unless it coula first guarantee the extinction of this hated body.
The attempt by unprejudiced third parties to secure evidence in
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72 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE IV
regard to the merits or demerits of the controversy has been met
with no response. Either an entire submission to their condi-
tions, including the abolition of a central organization or the
cessation of all work, has been the consistent position of the
Building Contractors' Council.
How far the men have shown their willingness to meet the con-
tractors is shown by the propositions of the union men in the
recent attempt of arbitration by Mr. Gompers. At the national
conference of the American Federation of Labor President Gom-
pers and Vice-President Thomas I. Kidd were delegated to in-
vestigate and try to bring about a conciliation of the struggle.
In their conference with the committee of contractors they were
authorized to submit a proposition in which the demands of the
contractors were conceded with the following modifications:*
That employers shall be at liberty to employ and discharge
whomsoever they see fit; that the employer shall have the right
to employ whomsover he pleases, provided the union of the
trade is unable to furnish men, but all men shall receive the full
wages agreed upon in their trade. •
"Explanation: The unions do not think it fair or just to them
that after years of effort spent in organizing, contributing liberal-
ly of their money and energy in the meantime, that some one
who, if he has not been decidedly antagonistic to them, has at
least been passive, should be allowed equal rights to share the
fruits of what they have secured. While they recognize the God-
given right of earning a living which belongs to every man, they
claim that under existing conditions it is as essential to have a
trade union in the industrial field as to have a code of morals
or a code of laws governing a people, and while some men do not
like the existence of the law, they are bound to observe it in
the interests of the greatest number.
"That the rate of wages shall be subject to arbitration when
agreements cannot be reached between parties.
"That agreements shall cover a period of not less than three
years.
"That an arbitration clause to provide for the adjustment of
possible difficulties in the future be made a part of this agree-
ment.
"That no by-laws or rules conflicting with the agreement shall
be enforced or pased by association or union except by mutual
consent, during the life of the agreement.
That no central body with which either party to this agree-
ment may be affiliated shall have the power to in anv way abro-
gate, change or annul any agreements entered into bv the parties
•Chicago Record, July 27.
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CHICAGO LOCKOUT 73
to this agreement. That central bodies shall exist not for the
purpose of making, but for the purpose of maintaining agree-
ments entered into by the unions or associations forming its com-
ponent parts; and if the existing central bodies contain anything
in their constitution or by-laws conflicting with this they shall
be amended in conformity with this agreement.
"All matters governing employment, wages, trade, the in-
terpretation of working rules, etc., shall be considered matters to
be settled by arbitration."
It would seem that no employer had any rights whatever to
dictate over any organization of employes that exists only for
defense and self-preservation, unless he is determined to abso-
lutely domineer over all the actions of his employe. Still the
contractors refused absolutely to have anything to do with any
proposition that did not carry with it the withdrawal of the
unions from the Building Trades Council.
One charge that has been made repeatedly against the Build-
ing Trades Council is that some of its members and leaders have
used their influence over the men to secure offices in the city
hall. As a correlate to this the city administration has been ac-
cused of undue leniency towards the unions, that the administra-
tion in order to secure the votes of the union men has overlooked
violations of the law and refused to come to the assistance of the
contractors in as liberal a manner as desired to protect non-
union men. The same objection has always been made against
elective officers, that they are amenable to influence of the most
potent electors. Sometimes it is an inspector who does not dare
to enforce the factory laws, or the fire escape ordinance, where-
by scores of people are brought to untimely deaths because of the
pull that the capitalist has. That a permanent organization of
laboring people can exert an influence over the administration
only indicates what power it may wield when properly directed.
That delegates to the Building Trades Council hold city jobs
means that they use the influence they have in their unions for
self-promotion. What malign effect that may have upon other
organizations than their own is difficult to see. They cannot be
blamed for influencing the city government in favor of their own
organization. A leader whose popularity in his own union has
gained him an administrative or legislative position must be
condemned if he dissipates his opportunities in alliances with
parties that exist and are maintained at the expense of and det-
riment to the laboring class. The Building Trades Council is an
excellent school where native talent and ability can be developed
and utilized. It is indeed a pity that this talent shall be con-
sumed in the service of a political machinery of whatever name
that feeds upon labor, but whose only return to labor are vague
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74 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
promises. When the labor unions wake up to combine their
strength in voting for candidates of their own party that will do
their bidding as surely as the party of the employers now do
theirs, there will be no necessity for any such strikes and lock-
outs as now so frequently convulse the industrial body. Until
that time the contractors ought to tolerate that the larger body
is satisfied with the sops that an indulgent administration deigns
to give.
The attitude of the general public has been very instructive.
The combined moneyed interests, like the bankers and real estate
dealers, showed early and clearly their sympathies. In response
to a circular letter sent out by the Contractors' Council a docu-
ment indorsing the action taken by the contractors was signed
by more than a score of the most prominent business men and
bankers in Chicago. A man whose former service as comptroller
of the currency has opened for him a high position in Chicago,
throws the weight of that position in favor of the contractors
in a lengthy argument about the rights of employers to fix con-
tracts. At a dinner of the Real Estate Board a member even
went so far as to suggest, after having denounced the mayor for
his non-committal attitude: "What is the use of monkeying with
the politicians in the question? These fellows don't care what
we say. The only way out of it is simply to tell them you can't
put up a building and that you won't try. That's it. Starve it
out! It's the only, only, only way."
A reverend doctor who preaches in a fashionable church on
the West Side put the case thus: "God has said to man, Thou
shalt labor.' The walking delegate says, Thou shalt not labor/
Who will win ?" Here the contractor even receives divine sanc-
tion. The newspapers of Chicago who faithfully reflect the
minds of the moneyed classes with few exceptions have
been unsparing in their denunciations of the Building Trades
Council. Inspired by the able press committee of the Building
Contractors' Council, they were in the first months of the year
frantic in exposing the shortcomings of the unions. As will hap-
pen in all strikes, acts of indiscretion and violence were com-
mitted, in which the papers saw violent threats of riot and mob
rule and even demanded the calling out of the militia. But as
time went on and the contractors were unable to secure scab-
labor, things quieted down and the tone of the press also calmed.
One paper has seen in the persistent refusal of the contractors to
arbitrate a reason to lay part of the blame upon their shoulders.
A new paper started for campaign purposes adopted at the be-
ginning an opposite policy, denouncing at once the Building
•Chicago Record, May 18.
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CHICAGO LOCKOUT 75
Contractors' Council and the Republican party as the oppressors
of the poor and enemies to labor.
This unanimous animosity of the leisure classes towards labor
organizations can not always be taken as individual hostility. It
is rather the outcome of defective information and a reflection
of class feeling. The reasoning faculty of the public is formed
by social conditions and the sympathies of the unit is directed
by class-distinctions. If the appearance of the case makes the
class judgment plausible the individual does not hesitate to
adopt it.
Let us impartially review the philosophy of the situation. The
owner supplies the funds to build a house. The architect draws
the plans and makes the specifications. Materials can be bought
on the market. The laborers perform the work. For protection
of the laborers unions have grown up. The history of the past
has sufficiently vindicated their existence as desirable and neces-
sary. Even the contractors have been careful to state that they
wage no war upon the unions, they would lose all public sym-
pathy if they did. In unionism has been the only strength of the
laborer. If it is right for one set of men to combine for mutual
advantage, it is certainly right for them to unite with another
set The strength of the industrial unions has increased im-
mensely by the organization into a central body. The aim and
purpose of the Building Trades' Council is a right and laudable
one: that of self protection. There is a great difference between
the organization of unions and that of capital, — the first protects
men, lives, human happiness, the latter only things. There is a
great similarity — both give effectiveness. As yet we have seen no .
limits to the growing organization of the latter, although many
view it with apprehension as infringing upon human welfare.
Why mav we not expect that organizations whose sole aim is
the welfare of the laborer should not grow in effectiveness? Why
should not a bricklaver combine with a carpenter? Why should
a plumber be excluded ? Have not all laborers common interests
that they need to guard unitedly? No doubt we will see in the
future all labor organizations unite in common purpose and ac-
tion, and who needs to fear the day? In power there is always a
temptation to abuse, and the present conflict may have been
averted, if the Building Trades Council had not overestimated its
strength in enforcing existing contracts and made timely con-
cessions. Whether the ultimate results would have been better
is impossible to say.
And here comes the office of the contractor. His business is
to correlate the capital of the owner with the labor of the men.
It is his business to see that the adjustment of capital and labor
is smooth and precise. He is the lubricator in the house building
machinery. He is not the capitalist, has in many instances no
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76 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
capital, as that is forthcoming from the owner as the work pro-
ceeds. He does nothing of the work, especially if he has large
contracts, as the superintendence and skilled work is done by
men paid for that purpose. His only office is to see that the work
is done in the time stipulated. If he fails in this he fails in his
office. All the friction that has existed in the past is only an in-
dication of his inability to fill his office in the industrial process.
The efficient railroad manager prevents strikes on his road by
judicious actions. The efficient contractor will not run counter
to his working rules or violate agreements with his men. And
right here is the insecurity and difficulty in the contactors posi-
tion. He performs no essential part in the labor, but his posi-
tion is only a pecuniary one. As in the clothing trade, the con-
tractor or sweater, as he is called, has been found profitable to
retain by the manufacturer, because he is more efficient than the
latter to produce cheap labor. The contractor has to live by
both the laborer and owner, and when the laborers are able to
demand high wages, as they do in Chicago, the contractor must
find room in which to turn. There are too many contractors in
Chicago for the profits. The weaker ones need to be weeded
out by long inactivity, during which their capital is consumed.
The chief safeguard of the labor unions, the central body, must
be broken down, and the unions handled singly. Add to that a
season of depression, which must inevitably come, and the men
will be willing to work for more reasonable wages. This is the
programme of the contractors who expect to survive in the strug-
gle for existence, and our popular inertia and fondness of cling-
.ing to established modes of industry assist the programme.
Lately some owners have continued their building with arch-
itects dealing directly with representatives of the men, and the
experiment would be continued by others if the conspiracy be-
tween the architects, material dealers, and contractors did not bar
the way. As it is, the men suffer, the public suffers, but we vin-
dicate our policy of non-interference, that allows a few men to
clog the wheels of industry, only because they will not allow
thousands of other people to exercise a liberty which they them-
selves enjoy.
S. V. Lindholm.
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THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN ITALY.
Italy is passing through the most critical period of its history
after the revolution which gave it its unity and its constitution.
Through this revolution the most active party of the bourgeoisie,
aided by the working people, relieved us of foreign rulers, broke
the temporal power of the pope, gave itself a representative con-
stitutional government, to the end of winning, through suffrage,
free meetings and a free press, the political administration and
the control of public affairs, but socially it did not finish the work
of the French revolution. That is to say that even today in
Southern Italy we enjoy certain delights of the feudal systems, so
that one may well say that the working class is caught between
two evils, those which are derived from a capitalist system as yet
imperfect, and those which remain to us from the ancient systems
not yet entirely disappeared.
The revolution accomplished, our patriots of the bourgeoisie
threw themselves upon the now unified Italian state, to cut their
piece out of the rich cake. And the communal portion, the goods
in mortmain in possession of the church, were confiscated and
sold for almost nothing to the new men ; the huge insanity of our
parvenus makes Italy enter into the concert of European powers
and into the triple alliance which brings us the heavy burdens of
a war budget exceeding the resources of the country, and we
even have to undertake colonial adventure in Africa to fill the
pockets of the dealers in supplies, of the financiers, of the greedy
politicians. The defeat of Adowa delivered us forever from
Crispi and his gang, but there remains to us a budget very heavy
and always with a surplus of passivity and a system of taxation
which hampers every new activity in manufacturing and agricul-
ture. Every milliard of net income is weighted down with a 24
^>er cent tax. Even the working class is over-taxed, if one con-
siders that salt pays 15 cents per pound, and as for our intellectual
level, we have still 42 per cent of illiterates.
Meanwhile the working class, which had gained very little,
still received very slender wages (the women who rebelled in the
rice fields near Bologne earned 14 cents per day for twelve hours
with their legs in the water and their backs in the sun) while the
price of wheat was increased by the import duties to $1.10 and
even to $1.80 a bushel. So the working class detached themselves
from the "patriots" and began to follow a policy of their own,
adopting the socialist doctrines and opposing themselves to the
whole class of the bourgeoisie. The attempts on the part of the
bourgeois government to crush the socialist party and the labor
77
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
78 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
movement are continual. As bread riots are frequent in the
south, the government and the ruling class take advantage of
them to accuse the socialists and overwhelm them with volleys
of musketry and centuries of prison. Molinella, Caltavutuvo,
Partinico, etc., are bloody examples of the Calvary of the Italian
proletariat, and Volterra and Pallanga are the Spielbergs of the
new martyrs of the liberty and the emancipation of the working
class. But the socialist party always springs up more alive,
stronger and fuller of fight than ever, and especially in the north,
where the industrial and economic movement is more advanced
and civilization more diffused, it wins the sympathy of even a part
of the little bourgeoisie, crushed under the weight of taxes and
weary of a too costly administration, which obstructs all progress,
every useful effort. The conservative class increases its attempts
to stifle the movement of the workingmen, which has already
shown itself in a good number of cities and parliamentary seats
captured by the socialists and republicans, and in a series of
strikes for higher wages and shorter hours. Profiting by a recent
revolt of starvation provoked by the high cost of bread in the
south, which excited a certain agitation in the most populous
centers of Florence, Milan, Pavia, etc., in May, 1898, the con-
servatives demand a state of siege, volleys, war bureaus. Results,
certain citizens stretched out on the pavements and certain others
in cells.
Strong in these exploits the conservative bourgeoisie who stand
for Italy superannuates, retrograde, denying the conquests of the
Revolution which had served to put them in control, wish to sup-
press the liberty of the press, of meetings, of unions and strikes,
and they even would like to limit the right of suffrage, because
these means assist a new class, that of the workers, to become
strong, and to put forth its own word in the administration of
public affairs.
The government, which for a number of years has merely ex-
pressed the will of the chamber, but which is chosen by the king
at his pleasure independently of the parliament, from his generals
and senators, of whom the incumbent president-general Pelloux
is a type, — this government, in order to stifle the socialist propa-
ganda, proposes two political measures which are real restrictions
of the liberties sanctioned by the statute, the compact sworn be-
tween the people and the king by the plebiscites.
To the measures of the reactionary mass and its government is
opposed the Extreme Left, represented by the socialists, the re-
publicans and the radicals. Many victories have been obtained
with the amnesty decreed by the people and bestowed upon those
condemned by military tribunals but acquitted by the popular
juries and by the investigations of the press, and of the popular
parties united in the defense of liberty. By parliamentary ob-
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
THE POLITICAL SITU A TION IN ITAL Y 79
struction the discussion of reactionary measures has been pre-
vented.
Unable to triumph legally, the government closes the Chamber
and assumes to give authority to its leaders by a royal decree.
But the Supreme Court of Cassation decides against it, and it then
presents its measures anew in the Chamber. And the obstruction
begins again. Unable to conquer, the majority then conceives
the idea of gagging the Extreme Left in the parliament and pro-
poses to adopt on short notice by showing of hands a new code
of parliamentary law called the Guillotine, which gives the Presi-
dent such powers to nullify the will of the minority, that the rule
ought justly to be disregarded.
The struggle is becoming more bitter, and this time, even the
constitutional liberal Left with its leaders? Zanardelli and Giolitti,
is making common cause with the Extreme Left and is opposing
any violation of the statute.
Many incidents show the ignoble spirit of Colombo, the Presi-
dent of the Chamber, and his party, and the noble spirit of the
party of the Extreme Left, which in this struggle wins the support
of the strongest and noblest minds of our country, such as
D'Annuzio the poet-novelist, Pantaleoni the economist and Lom-
broso the sociologist.
Finally the government, once more unable to get the active
support of parliament in its illegal acts, dissolves the Chamber
and appeals to the voters by asking the country to solve this ques-
tion, Whether the minority has the right to obstruct the par-
liamentary work of the majority?
The Extreme Left and the liberal Left answer by putting the
question in these terms, Whether the majority has the right to
undo that which the Italian people have conquered, the statute
and its liberties, and whether it has the right to slaughter the
minority once for all by depriving it by a new rule of the legal
means of opposing any reactionary reform or any economic
measure profitable to the conservative ruling class. And the
country replied by doubling the socialist group, which from 16
reaches the number of 32 representatives in the Chamber, by in-
creasing the republican group from 24 to 27, the radical group
from 24 to 32, and the whole Extreme Left from 64 to 94 seats.
And more significant still, the country relieves Milan, the moral
capital of Italy, from all its reactionaries, and among them that
Colombo who was the infamous President of the Chamber in its
last sessions.
And there is everywhere an awakening of new energy among
the working people and the small bourgeoise, who range them-
selves on the side of the popular parties, and who demand the
end of this outworn monarchal regime, of this foolish, reaction-
ary bourgeoisie, which finds its adherents and its support only in
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80 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
the impoverished and backward south, patient under oppressive
taxes and enforced labor, where servility and corruption are still
magnificent instruments of domination and victories for the mas-
ters of the hour. But even in the south these elections have
shown something of an awakening, in spite of the violence and
the corruption exercised, and three socialist deputies have been
elected: one at Naples and two in Sicily. The beginning of the
work of purification and renewal of the political character of these
proletarians accomplished with much courage by the socialists
has given magnificent results. The start is made, and more will
follow.
In the north whole provinces are conquered by the socialist and
anti-monarchial propaganda. The socialists who ten years ago
counted only 3 delegates now count 32, have polled more than
170,000 votes, are represented in 372 towns, and possess a daily
newspaper, "Avanti" (Forward), a bi-monthly review edited by
Turati: "Critica Sociale" (Social Critic), and 52 weekly news-
papers.
But the more strength the organized proletariat acquires, so
much the more obstinacy and bitterness does the conservative
class put into its opposition. It is thus that the conflict is on be-
tween the new Italy, which includes labor, intelligence, and a part
of the capitalists of the more civilized and modernized bourgeoisie
of the north, and the old Italy, which includes the wheel horses
of politics, the clans of the south, the largest cotton manufactur-
ers, the ship builders, the landlords, the king and the army, this
conflict is far from ending. The struggle will be great in propor-
tion to the foolish obstinacy of the parties of reaction, but whether
it be long or short, whether with or without bloodshed, — I can
not prophesy, but following the experience of the past it should
be easy to foresee, — the final result is not to be feared; it will
mark the triumph of the new Italy.
And the socialist party, having acquired the right of existence
which at present is every day contested, will be able to continue
its way along the lines of the class struggle, to finish its word of
emancipation for the workers, whence for the moment it has been
forced to suspend to procure for itself anew the oxygen of liberty.
Nevertheless the struggle continues most beautifully.
Allessandro Schiavi.
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THE WORKING-CLASS MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND.
The present movement is not a favorable one for the working-
class movement in this country, or for a review of its progress
and prospects. The whole nation, with a few honorable excep-
tions, is suffering from a bad attack of jingo madness. So far as
it has any organic existence, or any articulate collective voice, the
working-class is against the war. But that does not alter the fact
that the great bulk of the working people, as of every other class,
has gone rabidly jingo. The best known men in the working-
class movement have pronounced against the war, but they have,
most of them, been rather backward in doing so, and so in the
main their opposition has been ineffectual, and at the present
time the rank and file could not be counted upon to back their
leaders in an attitude of opposition to the prevailing jingoism.
Had these leaders come out boldly twelve months ago it is more
than likely that the war might have been prevented. We of the
Social-Democratic Federation did what w<e could, and we re-
ceived the support of one or two members of Parliament, but the
majority of the labor members stood aloof, just at the time when
their services in the cause of peace would have been most valu-
able. The difficulty seems to be that among these men there is a
tendency to separate what they call "labor questions" from gen-
eral politics; and so they appeared to regard the war as a matter
upon which "from a labor point of view/' they were not called
upon to express an opinion. That idea has been fatal to any
useful purpose their opinion might have served. For it cannot,
I think, be denied that the war has done incalculable mischief,
even so far as domestic and "labor" questions are concerned,
quite apart from the wider issues of the rights and wrongs of the
conflict itself.
At the beginning of the present session of Parliament the min-
istry were good enough to inform us, in the "Queen's Speech,"
that the present time was "not propitious for social legislation."
The moral was obvious, if only the workers had taken the trouble
to notice it. You cannot have your cake and eat it too; and the
money which has been spent on lyddite shells, dum-dum bullets,
and other warlike trifles for the delectation of the Boers is not
available for providing old age pensions, better dwellings, or an
improved system of education for the British people. It is always
to the interest of the master class to divert the attention of the
workers from their own affairs by stirring up foreign strife, and in
this case they seem to have done it with unqualified success. The
miserable slum-dweller does not know that he is miserable, does
not know that his dwelling is a slum and not a palace so long
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82 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
as he feels assured that "Bobs'* is smashing "old Kroojer," and he
can sing "Gawd Save the Queen" and "Rule Britannia." It is of
much more importance to him that the British should be suc-
cessful in defeating the Boers in South Africa than that he should
be successful in getting better conditions of life for himself at
home, and it does not matter in the least that he and his wife and
children starve so long as "Gawd" in his goodness will save the
Queen. And yet it is said that working people are selfish! The
one thing these facts demonstrate is that it is impossible to detach
labor questions from general politics, and that our masters are
quite aware of this fact even if labor leaders are not.
Thus, then, thanks to the ignorance of the workers, their lack
of organization and their readiness to be misled by the specious
pretexts of patriotism, added to the inaptitude and apathy of their
leaders, jingoism is rampant and any progressive movement
among them has been almost brought to a standstill. We are
within a few months of a general election. There is a very wide-
spread impression that it will take place almost immediately, and
in any case it cannot be delayed for more than a few months.
The Tories, now in office, are all powerful, and, whenever the
election takes place, they will, there is little doubt, be returned
with an increased majority. The Liberal party has resolved itself
into its elements, a mere collection of incoherent and incongruous
atoms. There was precious little life in it before, but this war
has smashed it completely, as many of the best known Liberals
are quite as jingo as any of the Tories. So far as the official op-
position, the Liberal party, is concerned, therefore, the govern-
ment will have it all its own way at the election, let it come when
it may, and apart from the Liberal party there is no opposition
at all, that is no opposition strong enough to make a show in the
House of Commons. We of the S. D. F. have several candi-
dates in the field, and there are some prospects of success at least
in certain of the constituencies. The Independent Labor Party,
too, is putting forward candidates in a number of places, but a\
most the two combined, even if successful beyond all hopes, will
do no more than constitute the nucleus of a party or group in
the House of Commons.
Early in the present month a conference was held representa-
tive of the Socialist organizations and the trade unions, and to
which the co-operative societies were invited, to form a combina-
tion to secure the better representation of labor in Parliament.
A committee has been appointed by the conference consisting
of members of the trade unions, the S. D. F. and I. L. P. and the
Fabian Society. The aim of the committee is to secure the co-
operation of these various sections for the support of any candi-
date any one of them may put forward. Some of our friends are
very sanguine about this committee, and anticipate great results
from its efforts. I fear, however, that not very much will come of
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THE WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND 88
it. The organizations represented on the committee number
some two hundred thousand members, and if all these members
were like some — active, class conscious Socialists — the committee
would be a power to be reckoned with. But the bulk of the mem-
bers of the trades unions are nothing of the kind. Although many
of their officials and most active men are Socialists, and although
the Trade Union Congress passes Socialist resolutions every year,
the majority of the rank and file of the trade unions are Liberals
or Tories or nothing at all. We hear a great deal about the trade
union movement, but really there is no such "movement." There
are strong, well organized, well equipped, wealthy trade unions,
but they do not constitute a movement. As a political force they
practically have no existence. Even in those few cases where a
trade union sends a member to the House of Commons, he goes
as the representative of that section, that trade, not as a repre-
sentative of the working-class as a whole, to voice its aspirations
and ideas, but simply to safeguard the trade interests of a section,
and perfectly free to be as reactionary as he likes on any other
matter. Under the circumstances, it is encouraging that the labor
members are as good as they are, but the circumstance does not
give such ground for hoping great things from a committee de-
pending so largely upon a trade union backing. Such a backing
will only be useful and reliable when it becomes Socialist, and it
is encouraging to know that in spite of all the reactionary influ-
ences at work, Socialism is steadily making progress in the ranks
of the trade unions. But until they really are Socialist, to at-
tempt to combine them into one party with the Socialist organiza-
tions, pure and simple, is at best a doubtful experiment. It is one
thing to endeavor to escape from the reproach of being a mere
sect, and to try to form a representative working-class party, it
is another thing to attempt to combine in such a party bodies
whose ideas are dissimilar, whose aspirations are not the same,
and who are not agreed on general principles. The most that can
be hoped from such a combination, it seems to me, is that it will
provide against the various sections fighting each other, which
has in the past been a cause of considerable Ill-feeling and some
scandal.
It may be gathered from the foregoing that the immediate po-
litical outlook for the working-class movement here is not partic-
ularly bright. It must not, therefore, be thought, however, that
the movement is out of heart, or that we see any reason to be
gloomy or cast down. All the time, in spite of drawbacks and dis-
couragements we keep pegging away and we also have the satis-
faction of seeing the movement make steady progress. Every
day sees us take a step forward, and if the steps are not the strides
wc should like to take, "slow and sure" is a good motto. It is
better to make haste slowly than too fast or to make no nroeress
at all. H. Quelch.
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SOCIALISM AND THE INTELLECTUALS.
Note by the Translator.— This address, although delivered In France and
called out by recent developments there, la most timely and important for
us in America. Here also the socialist movement has grown to the point
where the brain workers are joining It, and it rests with themselves to say
whether they shall be a mighty help or a petty hindrance. If they spend
their strength in trying to change the character of the movement by making
It "broad" enough to take In all amiable exploiters, if they build up fac-
tional organisations to preach socialism with the class struggle left out,— then
they will waste their labor, they will make themselves ridiculous, they will
delay the progress of socialism a little, not very much. But if they realise
that the laborers of the International socialist movement have a firm grasp
on the most Important scientific truths ever discovered, and if they will frank-
ly join the movement as comrades, not as self-appointed leaders, their train-
ing and ability will be of the utmost service in dealing with the serious prob-
lems that attend the break-up of capitalism and the building of the social
order of the future. G. H. K.
Address delivered at Paris March 23, 1900, at a meeting
called by the group of collectivist students attached
to the Parti Ouvrier Francais, by Paul Lafargue. Trans-
lated by Charles H. Kerr.
Ladies and Gentlemen: — I am happy to deliver this address
under the presidency of Vaillant, because it is a pledge of the close
and lasting union between our two organizations, and because
Vaillant is one of the intellectuals of the socialist party; he is
acknowledged to be the most learned of French socialists and
perhaps of European socialists, now that Marx, Engels and
Lavroff are no longer with us.
The group of collectivist students which has organized this
conference, has been led to choose this subject, because French
socialism has just passed through a crisis which is not exactly
one of growth, though such it has been called, but which has
been caused by the arrival of a certain number of bourgeois in-
tellectuals within the ranks of the party. It is therefore interest-
ing to examine the situation of the intellectuals in capitalized so-
ciety, their historic role since the revolution of 1789, and the
manner in which the bourgeoisie has kept the promise it made
them when it was struggling against the aristocracy.
The eighteenth century was the century of reason — every-
thing, religion, philosophy, science, politics, privileges of classes,
of the state, of municipalities, was submitted to its pitiless crit-
icism. Never in history had there been such a fermentation of
ideas and such a revolutionary preparation of men's minds. Mir-
abeau, who himself played a great role in the ideological agita-
tion, might well say in the national assembly: "We have no
time to think, but happily, we have a supply of ideas." All that
was needed was to realize them. Capitalism, to reward the in-
tellectuals who had labored with so much enthusiasm for the
coming of the revolution, promised them honors and favors; in-
84
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SOCIALISM AND THE INTELLECTUALS 85
telligence and wisdom, as well as virtue should be the sole priv-
ileges of the society it was founding upon the ruins of the old
order. Promises cost it little; it announced to all men that it
brought them joy and happiness, with liberty, equality and fra-
ternity, which, although eternal principles, were now born for
the first time. Its social world was to be so new that even before
the Republic was proclaimed, Camille Desmoulins demanded that
they begin a new era which should date from the taking of the
Bastile.
I need not teach you what application capitalism has made of
these eternal principles which by way of cynical raillery, she
carves on the lintels of her prisons, her penitentiaries, her bar-
racks and her halls of state.* I will only remind you that savage
and barbarous tribes, uncorrupted by civilization, living under
the regime of common property, without inscribing anywhere
these eternal principles, without ever formulating them, practice
them in a manner more perfect than ever was dreamed of by the
capitalists who discovered them in 1789.
It did not take long to determine the value of the promises
of capitalism; the very day it opened its political shop, it com-
menced proceedings in bankruptcy. The constituent assembly,
which formulated the rights of man and of the citizen and pro-
claimed equality before the law, discussed and voted, in 1790,
an electoral act which established inequality before the law; no
one was to be a voter but the "active citizen" paying in money
a direct tax equal to three days' labor, and no one was to be
eligible to office but the citizen paying a direct tax of a "silver
mark," about 55 francs. "But under the law of the silver mark,"
clamored Loustalot, Desmoulins and the intellectualists without
real estate, "Jean Jacques Rosseau, whose 'Social Contract' is the
bible of the revolution, would be capable neither of voting nor
of holding office." The electoral law deprived so many citizens
of political rights, that in the municipal elections of 1795, at
Paris, a city which counted about half a million inhabitants, there
were but 12,000 voters, Bailly was chosen mayor by 10,000 votes.
If the eternal principles were not new, it is also true that the
flattering promises made by the intellectuals had already begun
to be realized before the advent of capitalism to power. The
church, which is a theoretic democracy, opens her bosom to all.
That they may enter, all lay aside their titles and privileges, and
all can aspire to the highest positions; popes have risen from the
lower ranks of society. Sixtus Fifth had in his youth tended
swine. The church of the middle ages jealously attracted to
herself the thinkers and men of learning, although she respected
the wishes of those who wished to remain laymen, but extended
•Ever since the French Revolution the law has required the words "Lib-
erte, Egalite, Fratemlte" to be placed over the door of every public build-
ing in France.— Translator.
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80 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
over them her protection and her favors; she allowed them all
boldness of thought, on the single condition of keeping up the
appearance of faith, and never leaving her enclosure to lavish
themselves upon the vulgar. Thus Copernicus might write
and dedicate to the pope his "treatise on the revolution of the
celestial bodies/' in which, contrary to the teaching of the Bible,
he proves that the earth turns around the sun. But Copernicus
was a canon at Frannbourg and he wrote in Latin. When a cen-
tury later Galileo, who was not identified with the clergy and
who on the contrary sought the protection of the secular au-
thorities, professed publicly, at Venice and Florence, the theories
of Copernicus, the Vatican stretched out its terrible hand over
him and forced the illustrious old man to deny his scientific
belief. Even after the crisis of Protestantism, the church pre-
served its liberality toward the scientists who belonged to it.
Mersenne, a monk of the order of the Minimes, one of the great
geometers of the seventeenth century, a precursor and friend of
Descartes, corresponded freely with'Hobbes, the father of modern
materialism ; the notes of the French edition of "De Cive" contain
fragments of this correspondence.
The church, in keeping up this liberal conduct, may have been
animated by a disinterested love of pure science, but what chiefly
concerned her was the interest of her dominancy; she wished
to monopolize the intellectuals and science, just as in the old
theocratic Egypt the priests had done to whom the Greek thinkers
resorted in search of the first elements of science and philosophy.
It would be insulting capitalism to attribute to it a disinterested
love of science, which from its point of view has no reason for
existence except on the sole condition of utilizing natural forces
to the enhancement of its wealth. It cares nothing for pure
speculation and it is by way of self-defence that it allows its
scientists to devote their mental energy to theoretic researches
instead of exhausting it on practical applications. This con-
tempt for pure speculation is shown under a philosophic form
in the positivism of Auguste Comte, who embodies so well the
narrowness of the groveling spirit of capitalism.
But if science apart from its industrial applications does not
interest the bourgeoisie their solicitude for the intellectuals takes
on none of die forms which we saw in that of the church, and
nowhere is their indifference to them better shown than in the
relative position of material property and of intellectual property
before the law.
Material property, whatever its origin, is by capitalist law a
thing eternal; it is forever assured to its possessor; it is handed
down from father to son to the end of the centuries, and no civil
or political power may lay upon it a sacrilegious hand. We have
lately seen a characteristic example of this inviolability of ma-
terial property.
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SOCIALISM AND THE INTELLECTUALS 87
The keeper of the signal station at Durban transmitted to the
Boers heliographic dispatches informing them regarding the
ships which entered the harbor, the men, the horses and the
munitions of war which they transported. His treason brought
him 125,000 fcancs, which, like an intelligent capitalist, he de-
posited in the bank. The English military authorities seized the
traitor, condemned him and shot him, but they respected his
property so honorably acquired, and his widow and son are now
its legitimate possessors. The law, apart from certain variations,
being the same in all capitalist countries, things go on
in France as in England. No authority could lay hand on the
property of Bazaine, nor make De Lesseps, Cottu and their fami-
lies disgorge the millions artfully extracted from the "lambs" on
Panama canal stock.
This legal sanctity of property is a new thing, in France it
dates from the revolution of 1789. The old regime, which had
small respect for this sort of property, authorized the confiscation
of the property of those legally condemned, and the abolition
of confiscation is one of the first reforms demanded in the pe-
titions of Paris and several provincial cities to the states general.
Capitalism, by forbidding the confiscation of property obtained
by fraudulent and infamous means, proclaims that the source cf
its fortune is quite as fraudulent and infamous as that of criminals
and traitors.
Capitalist law has none of these amenities for intellectual prop-
erty. Literary and artistic property such as the law protects at
all has but a precarious life, limited to the life of the author and a
certain time after his death — fifty years according to the latest
legislation; that time passed, it lapses into common property; for
example, beginning with March of this year, any publisher has
the right to bring out for his own profit the works of Balzac, the
genius of romantic literature.
Literary property, though a matter of interest to pubilshers,
who are certainly few in number, brings no benefit to the mass
of the capitalist class, but not so with property in inventions
which is of prime importance to all the manufacturing and mer-
cantile capitalists. Consequently over it the law extends no
protection. The inventor, if he wishes to defend his intellectual
property against capitalist pirates, must begin by buying that
right, taking out a patent, which he must renew every year;
on the day he misses a payment, his intellectual property be-
comes the lawful prey of the robbers of capitalism. Even if he
pays, he can secure that right only for a time; in France, four-
teen years. And during these few years, not long enough gen-
erally to get his invention fully introduced into practical indus-
try, it is he, the inventor, who at his own expense has to set in
morion the machinery of the law against the capitalist pirates
who rob him.
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88 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
The trade-mark, which is a capitalistic property that never re-
quired any intellectual effort, is on the contrary indefinitely pro-
tected by law like material property.
It is with reluctance that the capitalist class has granted the
inventor the right of defending his intellectual property, for by
virtue of its position as the ruling class it regards itself as en-
titled to the fruits of intellectual labor as well as of manual labor;
just as the feudal lord asserted his right of possession over the
property of his serfs. The history of the inventions of our cen-
tury is the monstrous story of their spoliation by the capitalists;
it is a long and melancholy roll of martyrs. The inventor, by
the very fact of his genius, is condemned with his family to ruin
and suffering.
It is not only inventions requiring long and laborious study,
heavy outlay for their completion and long time for their intro-
duction, that plunge the inventor into the inferno of poverty;
this is equally true of inventions that are most simple, most im-
mediately applicable and most fertile in rich results. I will men-
tion but one example: there lately died at Paris in extreme pov-
erty a man whose invention saves millions of francs a year to the
railroads and mining companies; he had discovered a way to
utilize the mountains of coal dust that encumbered the neigh-
borhood of wharfs and mines by converting it into "briquettes,"
such as are today in common use for fuel.
The capitalist bourgeoisie, the most revolutionary class that
ever oppressed human societies, cannot increase its wealth with-
out continuously revolutionizing the means of production, con-
tinuously incorporating into its industrial enquipment new appli-
cations of mechanics, chemistry and physics. Its thirst for in-
ventions is so insatiable that it creates factories for inventions.
Certain American capitalists united in constructing for Edison at
Menlo Park the most wonderful laboratory in the world, and in
putting at his disposal trained scientists, chosen workmen, and
the ordinary materials necessary to make and keep on making
inventions which the capitalists patent, exploit or sell. Edison,
who is himself a shrewd business man, has taken care to se-
cure for himself a part of the benefits brought by the Menlo
Park inventions.
But not all inventors are able like Edison to dictate terms
to the capitalists who equip invention factories. The Thompson-
Houston Company at Paris and Siemens at London and Berlin,*
in connection with their plants for turning out electrical ma-
chinery, have laboratories where ingenious men are kept busy
•It Is a well-known fact tbat In the American establishments of tbe9e and
similar companies each workman before receiving employment must sign pa-
pers transferring to the corporation the title to all Inventions made by him
while in Its service.— Translator.
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SOCIALISM AND THE INTELLECTUALS 89
searching out new applications of electricity. At Frankfort the
manufactory of aniline dyes, the largest in the world,
where anti-pyrine, that mineral quinine, was discovered, keeps
on its pay roll more than a hundred chemists to discover new
products in the prolific waters of coal-tar. Each discovery is
at once patented by the house, which, by way of encourage-
ment, gives a reward to the inventor.
We may up to a certain point regard all factories and work-
shops as laboratories for inventions, since a considerable number
of improvements in machinery have been devised by workmen
in the course of their work. The inventor having no money to
patent and apply his discovery, the employer takes out the patent
in his own name, and in accordance with the spirit of capitalist
justice, it is he who reaps all the benefit. When the government
takes it into its head to reward talent, it is the employer who
receives the decoration; the inventive workman, who is not an
intellectual, continues to revolve like the other machines under
the black and greasy number which distinguishes him, and as in
this capitalist world he must be content with little, he consoles
himself for his poverty by the reflection that his invention is
bringing wealth and honor to his employer.
The capitalist class, which to increase its wealth is in pressing
need of inventions, is in even more imperative need of intellectuals
to supervise their application and to direct its industrial ma-
chinery. The capitalists, before they e*quipped invention factories,
had organized factories to turn out intellectuals. Dollfus, Scherer-
Kestner and other employees of Alsace, the most intelligent,
most philanthropic and consequently the heaviest exploiters in
France before the war, had founded with their spare pennies at
Mulhouse, schools of design, of chemistry and of physics, where
the brightest children of their workmen were instructed gratis,
in order that they might always have at hand and at a reasonable
figure the intellectual capacities required for carrying on their
industries. Twenty years ago the directors of the Mulhouse
school persuaded the municipal council of Paris to establish the
city school of chemistry and physics. At the beginning, whether
it is still the case I do not know, the pupils were recruited in the
common schools, they received a higher education, gratis, a
dinner at noon at the school, and 50 francs a month to indemnify
the parents for the loss from the fact that their sons were not in
the workshop.
On the platform of the constituent assembly of 1790 the Mar-
quis of Foucault could declare that to be a laborer it was not
necessary to know how to read and write. The necessities of
industrial production compel the capitalist of today to speak in
language altogether different; his. economic interests and not his
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90 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
love of humanity and of science force him to encourage and to
develop both elementary and higher education.
But the slave merchants of ancient Rome were, by the same
title, patrons of education. To the more intelligent of their hu-
man merchandise they gave instruction in medicine, philosophy,
Greek literature, music, etc. The education of the slave en-
hanced his market value. The slave who was an expert cook
brought a better figure than the slave doctor, philosopher or It-
erator. In our days it is still so; the big capitalists pay their chief
cooks better than the state pays the professors of liberal arts,
even though they be members of the institute. But contrary
to the practice of the Roman slave merchants, our capitalist
class lavishes instruction only in order to depress the selling
price of intellectual capacity.
Jaures in his preface to the Socialist History of France says
that "the intellectual Bourgeoisie, offended by a brutal and com-
mercial society and disenchanted with the bourgeois power, is
rallying to the support of socialism. " Unfortunately nothing
could be less exact. This transformation of the intellectual fac-
ulties into merchandise, which ought to have filled the intellect-
uals with wrath and indignation, leaves them indifferent. Never
would the free citizen of the ancient republics of Athens and
Rome have submitted to such degradation. The free man who
sells his work, says Cicero, lowers himself to the rank of the
slaves. Socrates and Plato 'were indignant,against the Sophists
who required pay for their philosophic teaching, for to Socrates
and Plato thought was too noble a thing to be bought and sold
like carrots and shoes. Even the French clergy of 1789 resented
as a mortal insult the proposition to pay a salary for worship.
But our intellectuals are accustoming themselves to such degra-
dation.
Spurred on by the mercantile passion, they are never better
satisfied with themselves or with society than when they succeed
in selling their intellectual merchandise at a good price; they
have even come to the point of making its selling price the meas-
ure of its value. Zola, who is one of the most distinguished rep-
resentatives of literary intellectualism, estimates the artistic value-
of a novel by the number of editions sold. To, sell their intellec-
tual merchandise has become in them such an all-absorbing prin-
ciple that if one speaks to them of socialism, before they inquire
into its theories, they ask whether in the socialistic society in-
tellectual labor will be paid for and whether it will be rewarded
equally with manual labor.
Imbeciles! they have eyes but they see not that it is the cap-
italist bourgeoisie which establishes that degrading equality; and
to increase its wealth degrades intellectual labor to the point of
paying it at a lower rate than manual labor.
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SOCIALISM AND THE INTELLECTUALS 91
We should have to put off the triumph of socialism not to the
year 2000 but to the end of the world if we had to wait upon the
delicate, shrinking and impressionable hesitancy of the intellect-
uals. The history of the century is at hand to teach us just how
much we have a right to expect from these gentlemen.
Since 1789 governments of the most diverse and opposed char-
acter have succeeded each other in France; and always, without
hesitation the intellectuals have hastened to offer their devoted
services. I am not merely speaking of those two-for-a-cent in-
tellectuals who litter up the newspapers, the parliaments and
the economic associations; but I mean the scientists, the univer-
sity professors, the members of the Institute; the higher they
raise their heads, the lower they bow the knee.
Princes of science, who ought to have conversed on equal terms
with kings and emperors, have marketed their glory to buy of-
fices and favors from ephemeral ministers. Cuvier, one of the
mightiest geniuses of the modern era, whom the revolution took
from the household of a nobleman to make of him at 25 years
one of the museum professors, Cuvier took the oath of allegiance
and served with fidelity the Republic, Napoleon, Louis XVfll,
Charles X and Louis Philippe, the last of whom created him a
peer of France to reward him for his career of servility.
To devote one's self to all governments without distinction is
not enough. Pasteur placed his glorious name at the service of
the financiers, who placed him in the administrative council of the
Credit Foncier, side by side with Jules Simon, with dukes and
counts, with senators, deputies and ex-ministers, in order to en-
trap the "lambs.'' When De Lesseps was equipping his colossal
swindle of the Panama canal, he enrolled the intellectuals of the
Institute, of the French Academy, of literature, of the clergy, of
all the circles of higher life.
It is not in the circle of the intellectuals, degraded by centuries
of capitalist oppression, that we must seek examples of civic cour-
age and moral dignity. They have not even the sense of profes-
sional class-consciousness. At the time of the Dreyfus affair, a
certain minister bounced, as if he had been a mere prison guard,
one of the professors of chemistry in the Polytechnic school who
had had the rare courage to give public expression to his opinion.
When in a factory the employer dismisses a workman in too
arbitrary a fashion, his comrades grumble, and sometimes quit
work, even though misery and hunger await them in the street.
All his colleagues in the Polytechnic school bowed their heads
in silence; each one crouched in self-regarding fear, and what is
still more characteristic, not a single partisan of Dreyfus in the
Society of the Rights of Man or in the ranks of the press raised
a voice to remind them of the idea of professional solidarity. The
intellectuals who on all occasions display their transcendental
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ethics, have still a long road to travel before they reach the moral
plane of the working class and of the socialist party.
The scientists have not only sold themselves to the govern-
ments and the financier; they have also sold science itself to the
capitalist-bourgeoisie. When in the eighteenth century there
was need to prepare the minds of men for revolution, by sapping
the ideologic foundations of aristocratic society, then science
fulfilled its sublime mission of freedom; it was revolutionary; it
furiously attacked Christianity and the intuitional philosophy.
But when the victorious bourgeoisie decided to base its new
power on religion, it commanded its socialists, its philosophers
and its men of letters to raise up what they had overthrown ; they
responded to the need with enthusiasm. They reconstructed
what they had demolished ; they proved by scientific, sentimental
and romantic argument the existence of God the father, of Jesus
the son and of Mary the virgin mother. I do not believe history
offers a spectacle equal to that presented in the first years of the
nineteenth century by the philosophers, the scientists and the lit-
erary men, who from revolutionaries and materialists suddenly
transformed themselves into reactionaries, intuitionalists and
Catholics.
This backward movement still continues; when Darwin pub-
lished his Origin of Species, which took away from God his robe
of creator in the organic world, as Franklin had despoiled him of
his thunderbolt, we saw the scientists, big and little, university pro-
fessors and members of the Institute, enrolling themselves under
the orders of Flourens, who for his own part had at least
his eighty years for an excuse, that they might demolish the
Darwinian theory, which was displeasing to the government and
hurtful to religious beliefs. The intellectuals exhibited that pain-
ful spectacle in the fatherland of Lanark and of Geoffroy Saint-
Hilaire, the creators of the evolution theory, which Darwin com-
pleted and defended against criticism.
Today, now that the clerical anxiety is somewhat appeased,
the scientists venture to profess the evolution theory, which they
never opposed without a protest from their scientific conscience,
but they turn it against socialism so as to keep in the good graces
of the capitalists. Herbert Spencer, Haeckel and the greatest
men in the school of Darwinism demonstrate that the classifica-
tion of individuals into rich and poor, idlers and laborers, capi-
talists and wage-earners, is the necessary result of the inevitable
laws of nature, instead of being the fulfillment of the law and the
justice of God. Natural selection, they say, which has differen-
tiated the organs of the human body, has forever fixed the ranks
and the functions of the social body. They have, through servil-
ity, even lost the logical spirit. They are indignant against Aris-
totle because he, being unable to conceive of the abolition of
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SOCIALISM AND THE INTELLECTUALS 08
slavery, declared that the slave was marked off by nature; but
they fail to see that they are saying something equally monstrous
when they affirm that natural selection assigns to each one his
place in society.
Thus it is no longer God or religion which lead the workers
to wretchedness, — it is science. Never was there an intellectual
bankruptcy more fraudulent.
M. Brunetieres, one of those intellectuals who do not feel their
degradation and who joyfully fulfill their servile task, was right
when he proclaimed the failure of science. He does not suspect
how colossal this bankruptcy is.
Science, the great emancipator, which has tamed the powers
of nature, and might in so doing have freed man from toil so
that he could develop freely his faculties of mind and body;
science, become the slave of capital, has done nothing but supply
means for capitalists to increase their wealth, and to intensify their
exploitation of the working class. Its most wonderful applications
to industrial technique have brought to the children, the women
and the men of the working class nothing but overwork and
misery!
The middle-class revolutionary party of 1789 cried out in
horror and indignation against the lords, who through the long
summer nights compelled their servants to beat the ponds near
their castles in order to keep the frogs from croaking. What would
they say if they saw what we see? Improvements in lighting date
from the capitalist period. At the end of the last century Argant
and Carcel invented the lamp with a double current of air, at the
beginning of this Chevreul invented the stearic candle, then gas
was discovered, then petroleum, then the electric light, turning
night into day. What benefits have these scientific improvements
in lighting brought to the workers? They have enabled em-
ployers to impose night work upon millions of proletarians, no
longer in the midsummer nights and in the balmy air of the
fields, but through nights of summer and winter in the poisonous
air of the workshops and factories. The industrial applications
of mechanics and chemistry have transformed the happy and
stimulating work of the artisan into a torture which exhausts
and kills the proletarian.
When Science subdued the forces of nature to the service of
man, ought she not to have given leisure to the workers that they
might develop themselves physically and intellectually; ought
she not to have changed the "vale of tears" into a dwelling place
of peace and joy? I ask you, has not Science failed in her mis-
sion of emancipation?
The obtuse capitalist himself is conscious of this failure; so he
directs his economists and his other intellectual domestics to
prove to the working class that it has never been so happy and
that its lot goes on improving.
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The economists, considering that to deserve the good graces
of the capitalists it was not enough to falsify economic facts, are
suppressing economic science, which is becoming dangerous for
the domination of capital. Since Adam Smith and Ricardo they
limit themselves to sifting over the same errors regarding value,
regarding the productivity of the predatory and idle capitalist,
to compiling facts and arranging statistics which guide the cap-
italists in their speculations; but they dare not draw conclusions
and build systems with the materials that they have accumulated.
When Ricardo wrote, the phenomena of modern production were
beginning their evolution, their communist tendencies could not
be perceived, one could then study them without taking sides and
could build up a science witkout fear of wounding the interests
of capital. But now that they have arrived at their full develop-
ment and show clearly their communal tendencies, the econo-
mists put out their own eyes that they may not see, and they
wage war against the principles established by Ricardo, which
after having served as a basis for the old bourgeois economy,
have become the points of departure of the Marxian economy.
To take a whack at the socialist theories and put themselves at the
service of the financiers, like barkers and fakirs of their bogus
goods, are the intellectual functions of the economists. Latterly
the owners of silver mines have enlisted them to sing the praises
of bimetallism, while Cecil Rhodes, Barnato, Beil, Robbers &
Company called them in to boom the Transvaal gold mines.
The intellectuals of art and literature, like the jesters of the old
feudal courts, are the entertainers of the class which pays them.
To satisfy the tastes of the capitalists and beguile their leisure, —
this is their whole artistic aim. The men of letters are so well
broken to this servile duty that they do not understand the spirit
of Moliere, their great ancestor, all the while that they adore the
letter of his works. Moliere is the writer most written about in
France; learned men have devoted themselves to gathering up the
scattered fragments of his erratic and careless youth, to fixing
the date and the hour of the representations of his comedies; if
they had unearthed an authentic piece of excrement from him
they would have set it in gold and would kiss it devotedly, but
the spirit of Moliere escapes them. You have read, as I have,
many critical analyses of his dramas. Did you ever find one of
them which brought out in clear light the role of this militant
playwright, who more than a century before Beaumarchais and
before the revolution, at Versailles, in the very court of the great
monarch, thrust at the nobility of the court and of the provinces,
attacked the church before which Descartes and the rest trembled,
hurled his jests at Aristotle, the unquestioned authority of La
Sorbonne. that secular church; who ridiculed the Pyrrhonism
which the neo-Kantians of our own days oppose to the materialist
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SOCIALISM AND THE INTELLECTUALS 95
philosophy of Marxian socialism, but which then was the weapon
of the Catholics, of Pascal, of Huet, the bishop of Avranches, to
strike and to overthrow human reason, with its impudent desire
of reaching knowledge by its own strength. Pitiful, wretched
reason, clamored these Kantians before Kant, you can know noth-
ing without the aid of faith! Moliere is unique in European lit-
erature, you must go back to the epoch of imperial Athens to
find his counterpart in Aristophanes.
If the bourgeois critics timidly and unintelligently mention
this side of Moliere, there is another of which their ignorance is
complete. Moliere was the man of his class, the champion of the
bourgeois class. Like the socialists who say to the workers,
"Break with the liberal bourgeoisie, which deceives you when it
does not slaughter you;" he cried to the Georges Dandins and
to the "bourgeois noblemen, ,, "Avoid the nobles like pests ; they
deceive you, mock you and rob you.''
The great capitalist bourgeoisie does not choose to work, either
with its hands or its brain ; it chooses merely to drink, to eat, to
practice lewdness and to look dignified in its beastly and cum-
bersome luxury; it does not even deign to occupy itself with
politics; men like Rothschild, De Lesseps, Vanderbilt, Carnegie,
Rockefeller, do not run for office; they find it more economical
to buy the officers than the voters, and more convenient to put
their clerks into the ministries than to take part in parliamentary
struggles. The big capitalists interest themselves only in the
operations of the stock exchange, which afford the delights of
gambling; they dignify these by the pompous name of "specula-
tions," — a word formerly reserved for the highest processes of
philosophical or mathematical thought. The capitalists are re-
placing themselves in the supervision and management of the
great industrial and commercial enterprises by intellectuals, who
carry them on, and usually are well paid for doing so. These
intellectuals of industry and politics, the privileged portion of
the wage class, imagine that they are an integral part of the cap-
italist class, while they are only its servants; on every occasion
they take up its defense against the working class, which finds in
them its worst enemies.
Intellectuals of this description can never be led into socialism ;
their interests are too closely bound to the capitalist class for
them to detach themselves and turn against it. But below these
favored few there is a swarming and famishing throng of intel-
lectuals whose lot grows worse in proportion to the increase of
their numbers. These intellectuals belong to socialism. They
ought to be already in our ranks. It ought to be true that their
education would have given them intelligence to deal with social
problems, but it is this very education which obstructs their
hearing and keeps them away from socialism. They think their
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education confers on them a social privilege, that it will permit
them to get through the world by themselves, each making his
own way in life by crowding his neighbor or standing on the
shoulders of everyone else. They imagine that their poverty is
transitory and that they only need a stroke of good luck to trans-
form them into capitalists. Education, they think, is the lucky
number in the social lottery, and it will bring them the grand
prize. They do not perceive that this ticket given them by the
capitalist class is fixed, that labor, whether manual or intellectual,
has no chance to do more than earn its daily pittance, that it
has nothing to hope for but to be exploited, and that the more
capitalism goes on developing, the more do the chances of an
individual raising himself out of his class go on diminishing.
And while they build castles in Spain, capital crushes them,
as it has crushed the little merchants and the little manufactur-
ers, who thought they, too, with free credit and a little luck,
might become first-class capitalists, whose names should be
written in the Great Book of the Public Debt.
The intellectuals, in all that has to do with the understanding of
the social movement, do not rise above the intellectual level of
those little bourgeois who scoffed so fiercely at the bunglers of
1830, who, after being ruined and merged in the proletariat, none
the less continue to detest socialism ; to such a degree were their
heads perverted by the religion of property. The intellectuals,
whose brains are stuffed with all the prejudices of the bourgeois
class, are inferior to those little bourgeois of 1830 and 1848 who at
least knew the smell of gunpowder; they have not their spirit of
combativeness, they are true imbeciles, — if we restore to this word
its original Latin meaning of unsuited for war. Without resist-
ance they endure rebuffs and wrongs and they do not think of
uniting, of organizing themselves to defend their interests and
give battle to capital on the economic field.
The intellectual proletariat as we know it is a recent growth,
it has especially developed in the last forty years. When after the
amnesty of the condemned of the Commune, we began again the
socialist propaganda, believing that it would be easy to draw
the intellectuals into the movement we took up our dwelling in
their cultured Latin quarter, Guesde taking his residence in the
Rue de la Pitie, Vaillant in the Rue Monge, and I in the Boule-
vard de Port Royal. We became acquainted with hundreds of
young men, students of law, of medicines, of the sciences, but
you can count on your fingers those whom we brought into the
socialist camp. Our ideas attracted them one day, but the next
day the wind blew from another quarter and turned their heads.
An honorable merchant of Bordeaux, a prominent member
of the municipal council, said in the time of the empire to my
father, who was disturbed over my socialism:
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SOCIALISM AND THE INTELLECTUALS 97
"Friend Lafargue, you must let youth take its course; I was
a socialist when I studied at Paris, I was connected with the
secret societies and I took part in the movement for demanding
of Louis Philippe the pardon of Barbes." The young men of
our age turn quickly, let them get back to their homes and they
develop prominent abdomens and become reactionaries.
We welcomed joyfully the entrance of Jaures into socialism;
we thought that the new form which he brought to our propa-
ganda would make it penetrate into circles that we had not been
able to touch. He has in fact made a decided impression on the
university circle, and we owe it in part to him that the meetings
of the normal school have ideas regarding the social movement
which are a little less absurd and formless than those with which
their learning and intelligence have hitherto been contented.
Lately, joining forces with the radical politicians who had lost
their working-class following, they have invaded the socialist
party. Their souls overflow with the purest intentions; if their
peaceful habits prevents them from throwing themselves into the
conflict, and if their lofty culture forbids them to take their place
in the ranks of the comrades, they nevertheless condescend to
instruct us in ethics, to polish off our ignorance, to teach us, to
impart to us such bits of science as we may be able to digest, and
to direct us ; they modestly offer themselves to us as leaders and
schoolmasters.
These intellectuals who for years have had it for their duty to
wear out trousers on the benches of the university that they
might became experts on exercises, polishers of phrases, phi-
losophers or doctors, imagine one can improvise himself into a
master of the socialist theory by attending one lecture or by the
careless reading of one pamphlet. Naturalists who had felt the
need of painful research to learn the habits of mollusks or of the
polyps who live in a community on the coral banks, think that
they know enough to regulate human societies, and that by keep-
ing their stand on the first steps of the ascending ladder of ani-
mal life they can the better discern the human ideal. The phi-
losophers, the moralists, the historians and the politicians have
aims equally lofty; they bring an abundant supply of ideas and a
new method of action to replace the imperfect theory and tactics
which in all capitalist countries have served to build up socialist
parties strong in numbers, unity and discipline.
The class struggle is out of fashion, declare these professors
of socialism. Can a line of demarcation be drawn between classes?
Do not the working people have savings bank accounts of $20,
$40 and $100, bringing them 50 cents, $1.50 and $3.00 of interest
yearly? Is it not true that the directors and managers of mines,
railroads and financial houses are wage-workers, having their
functions and duties in the enterprises which they manage for the
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account of capitalists? The argument is unanswerable, but by
the same token there is no vegetable kingdom nor animal king-
dom because we can not separate them "with an ax," as it were,
for the reason that at their points of contact, vegetables and ani-
mals merge into each other. There is no longer any day or any
night because the sun does not appear on the horizon at the
same moment all over the earth, and because it is day at the
antipodes while it is night here.
The concentration of capital? A worn-out tune of 1850. The
corporations by their stocks and bonds parcel out property and
distribute it among all the citizens. How blinded we were by
our sectarianism when we thought that this new form of property,
essentially capitalistic, was enabling the financiers to plunge their
thieving hands into the smallest purses, to extract the least pieces
of silver.
The poverty of the working class! But it is diminishing and
soon will disappear through the constant increase of wages,
while interest on money is constantly diminishing; some fine day
it will descend to zero and the bourgeois will be overjoyed to
offer their beloved capital on the altar of socialism. Tomorrow
or next day the capitalist will be forced to work, is the prediction
of Mr. Waldeck-Rousseau. And there are intellectuals whose
condition grows worse in proportion as capitalism develops, who
are stultified by the utterances of the employers to a point where
they affirm that the position of wage-workers is improving, and
there are intellectuals who assume to possess some knowledge
of political economy, who affirm that interest on money is rapidly
diminishing. Could these reformers of socialism perchance be
ignorant that Adam Smith calculated at the end of the eighteenth
century that 3 per cent was the normal interest of capital running
no risk, and that the financiers of our own epoch consider that it
is still around 3 per cent that the interest rate must fluctuate. If
a few years ago this rate seemed to fall below 2\ per cent, it has
risen today above 3 per cent. Capital is merchandise, like in-
tellectual capacities and carrots; as such it is subject to the fluctu-
ations of supply and demand. It was then more offered than
demanded, whereas since the development of the industrial plant
of Russia, since the opening of China to European exploitation,
etc., the over supply of capitalhas been absorbed and its price
rises with its scarcity. But the intellectuals have too many tri-
fles to think of and too many harmonious phrases to bal-
ance for giving any thought to economic phenomena.
They take at face value the artful fabrications of the
capitalists, and repeat with pious conviction the old litanies
of the orthodox economic church: "There are no classes, wealth
is coming to be distributed more and more equitably, the workers
are growing richer and those living on incomes are growing
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SOCIALISM AND THE INTELLECTUALS 99
poorer, and the capitalist society is the best of all possible so-
cieties; these truths shine forth like suns and none but partisans
and mystics can deny them. ,,
These intellectuals propose to modify the tactics as well as the
theories of the socialist party; they wish to impose upon it a
new method of action. It must no longer strive to conquer the
public powers by a great struggle, legal or revolutionary as
need may be, but let itself be conquered by every ministry of a
republican coalition; it is no longer to oppose the socialist party
to all the bourgeois parties; what is needed is to put it at the serv-
ice of the liberal party; we must no longer organize it for the
class struggle, but keep it ready for all the compromises of poli-
ticians. And to further the triumph of the new method of action,
they propose to disorganize the socialist party, to break up its
old systems and to demolish the organizations which for twenty
years have labored to give the workers a sense of their class in-
terests and to group them in a party of economic and political
struggle.
But the intellectuals will have their trouble for nothing; thus
far they have only succeeded in drawing closer the ties uniting
the socialists of the different organizations, and in covering them-
selves with ridicule.
The intellectuals ought to have been the first of all the various
groups to revolt against capitalist society, in which they occupy
a subordinate position so little in keeping with their hopes and
their talents, but they do not even understand it; they have such
a confused idea of it that Auguste Comte, Renan, and others more
or less distinguished have cherished the dream of reviving for
their benefit an aristocracy copied after the model of the Chinese
mandarin system. Such an idea is a reflection of past ages in
their heads, for nothing is in more absolute opposition with the
modern social movement than such pretensions. The intellectu-
als in previous states of society formed a world outside and above
that of production, having charge only of education, of the di-
rection of religious worship, and of the political administration.
The mechanic industry of these societies combine in the same
producer, manual labor and intellectual labor; it was for example
the same cabinetmaker who designed and worked out the piece
of furniture, who bought its first material and who even under-
took its sale. Capitalist production has divorced two functions
which once were indissolubly united; on the one side it puts the
manual workers, who become more and more servants of the
machine, and on the other the intellectual workers, engineers,
chemists, managers, etc. But these two categories of workers,
however different and contrary they may be in their education and
habits, are welded together, to the point that a capitalist indus-
try can not be carried on without manual laborers any more than
without intellectual wage-workers.
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United in production, united under the yoke of capitalist ex-
ploitation, united they should be also in revolt against the com-
mon enemy. The intellectuals, if they understood their own real
interests, would come in crowds to socialism, not through philan-
thropy, not through pity for the miseries of the workers, not
through affectation and snobbery, but to save themselves, to as-
sure the future welfare of their wives and children, to fulfill their
duty to their class. They ought to be ashamed at being left be-
hind in the social battle by their comrades in the manual cate-
gory. They have many things to teach them, but they have still
much to learn from them ; the working men have a practical sense
superior to theirs, and have given proof of an instinctive intuition
of the communist tendencies of modern capitalism which is lack-
ing to the intellectuals, who have only been able by a conscious
mental effort to arrive at this conception. If only they had un-
derstood their own interests, they would long since have turned
against the the capitalist class the education which it has gener-
ously distributed in order better to exploit them; they would have
utilized their intellectual capacities, which are enriching their
masters, as so many improved weapons to fight capitalism and to
conquer the freedom of their class, the wage-working class.
Capitalist production, which has overthrown the old conditions
of life and of work, has elaborated new forms, which already can
be discerned without supernatural vision, but which to the intel-
lectuals remain sealed under seven seals. One of the leading
lights of intellectualism, M. Durkheim, in his book, "The Divi-
sion of Labor," which made some noise in university circles, can
not conceive of society except on the social pattern of ancient
Egypt, each laborer remaining, his life through, penned up in one
single trade. However, unless one is so unfortunate as to be af-
fected by the hopeless near-sightedness of the normal school, one
can not help seeing that the machine is suppressing trades, one
after the other, in a way to let only one survive, that of the ma-
chinist, and that when it has finished its revolutionary work which
the socialists will complete by revolutionizing capitalist society,
the producer of the communist society will plow and sow with
the machine today, will spin, will turn wood or polish steel to-
morrow, and will exercise in turn all the trades to the greater
profit of his health and his intelligence.
The industrial applications of mechanics, chemistry and
physics, which, monopolized by capital, oppress the worker, will,
when they shall be common property, emancipate man and give
him leisure and liberty.
Mechanical production, which under capitalist direction can
only buffet the worker back and forth from periods of over-work
to periods of enforced idleness, will when developed and regulated
by a communist administration, require from the producer to
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SOCIALISM AND THE INTELLECTUALS 101
provide for the normal needs of society, only a maximum day of
two or three hours in the workshop, and when this time of neces-
sary social labor is fulfilled he will be able to enjoy freely the
physical and intellectual pleasures of life.
The artist then will paint, will sing, will dance, the writer
will write, the musician will compose operas, the philosopher will
build systems, the chemist will analyze substances not to gain
money, to receive a salary, but to deserve applause, to win laurel
wreaths, like the conquerors at the Olympic games, but to satisfy
their artistic and scientific passion; one does not drink a glass of
champagne or kiss the woman he loves for the benefit of the
gallery. The artist and the scientist may then repeat the enthus-
iastic words of Kepjer, that hero of science: "The elector of
Saxony with all his wealth can not equal the pleasure I have felt
in composing the Mysterium Cosmographicum."
Will not the intellectuals end by hearing the voice of the so-
cialist calling them to the rescue, to emancipate science and art
from the capitalist yoke, to liberate thought from the slavery of
commercialism ?
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DANGEROUS QUESTIONS.
The capitalist parties and press of the United States, like those
of all other countries, find their principal function in diverting the
exploited workers from all questions which might attract their
attention to the irreconcilable conflict existing between them and
their exploiters, and which might lead to their emancipation. But
economic development is more powerful than political caucuses
and platform makers, and that development has this year forced
to the front a series of questions that touch, the very foundation
of the capitalistic social organization. The attempts made either
to entirely avoid these subjects or to discuss and disagree about
them without touching these basic positions is almost ludicrous.
TRUSTS.
Trusts are the logical result of the competitive system operat-
ing under a regime of private property, and to discuss them with-
out touching those institutions is to play Hamlet with Hamlet
left out. Both parties attempted this impossible feat. They
sought to advocate "regulation" within existing social organiza-
tion. But this was so simple, easy and harmless that both parties
claimed it as their method of settling the problem. The Repub-
lican party, which is controlled, owned, dominated, officered and
financed by the great trust magnates, was nevertheless willing to
go further in the application of this "remedy" than its opponent,
and proposed a constitutional amendment to give Congress great-
er power to deal with these obnoxious creations. The Demo-
cratic party, however, still continued to pose as the particular
friend of those who had been hit by the trusts. Its speakers and
writers claimed to be filled with a deep and undying hatred of all
things in any way connected with these terrible objects. Judge
of their discomfiture when it was discovered that the leaders and
officers of Tammany Hall, without whose support no Democratic
party could hope to win, were the owners of the great New York
Ice Trust, and that the whole strength of that organization and
the Democratic administration of New York city was being used
to secure special favors from the municipality for the trust.
Then when the Kansas City convention met it interrupted its
denunciation of the trusts long enough to decide a contested seat
in favor of Senator Clark of Montana, one of the principal owners
and managers of the Copper Trust, and who had just been ex-
pelled from the United States Senate for having been awkward
enough to get caught in bribing his way into that notorious mil-
lionaires' club. Rumor has it that his way into the aforesaid Dem-
108
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DANGEROUS QUESTIONS 108
ocratic convention was smoothed by a two million dollar dona-
tion to the campaign fund; but, however, that may be, enough had
happened to show that the "trust issue" was a decidedly danger-
ous thing to handle, and so it was relegated to a back seat by both
parties.
THE NEGRO QUESTION.
Another question to be avoided by all capitalist parties is the
treatment of the negroes in the Southern states. Space does not
here permit to show how, by the entrance of northern factories
into the "black belt" upon the one hand and the importation of
negroes by Northern employers to crush labor unions upon the
other, the "negro question" has become .simply a part of the
"labor problem/' so that his old friends (?) the Republican party
are no longer interested in his welfare, but, on the contrary, have
a very active interest in keeping him, in common with the whole
laboring class, from seeking his own interests at the ballot box.
Thus it is that the Democratic party is left unmolested in its viola-
tion of that bulwark of capitalism, the United States Constitu-
tion, and permitted to work its will upon the helpless blacks.
This permits the Democratic party to pose before the country as
the particular exponent of the idea that "All governments derive
their just powers from the consent of the governed," and to flood
the country with literature demanding that the Filipinos, Cubans,
and Porto Ricans be given the full and unrestricted ballot, while
at the same time they are enacting and rigorously enforcing laws
completely disenfranchising a majority of the voters throughout
the Southern states of the union. Worse yet, while this same
Democratic party is convulsed with "thrills of horror'' over the
wrongs that are committed upon the inhabitants of some far-off
Pacific islands they are lending encouragement and protection to
the burning and torturing of uncondemned and untried negroes
by furious mobs of white Democratic voters.
GOVERNMENT BY INJUNCTION.
Notwithstanding the fact that the legislative bodies are com-
pletely in the control of the capitalist class it is not always pos-
sible for these bodies to foresee all emergencies that might arise
and anticipate all desires of their masters. So it has been found
much more effective in time of strike to have a judge declare that
whatever the employers desired was law and to enjoin the labor-
ers from violating this "made to order'' legislation. With this
plan also it was possible to punish the objecting employees for
contempt without the troublesome formality of a jury trial. So
flagrant have these acts become that even the most stupid of the
workers have been aroused and there has been a general protest
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104 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIAUST RE VIE IV
against "government by injunction." The Democratic party, not
recognizing that this procedure was an essential part of our pres-
ent class governed social organization, attempted to use this dis-
content as an issue. But within the last few months two of the
most famous injunctions that have ever been issued were sent
out by Democratic judges, — Judge Hook, of Kansas City, com-
ing to the rescue of the street car owners at the time of a recent
strike with a blanket injunction forbidding the workers from do-
ing almost everything but eating, and even assisting their em-
ployers in curtailing that privilege, while another Democratic
judge in Augusta, Georgia, made it a crime for the laborers of
that city to boycott a "rat" paper. It is needless to say that
neither of these judges have been disavowed or even criticised by
the party to which they owe allegiance.
THE BULL PEN.
Here is the hottest and most dangerous subject of all for any
supporter of capitalism to touch. Here is a subject that neither
Republican nor Democrat dare mention. Notwithstanding that
outrages were perpetrated such as even despotic Russia would
hesitate to attempt; notwithstanding that men were shut up in a
living hell for months, without trial or even accusation and were
tortured into madness and shot for insane ravings; notwithstand-
ing that up to the present time the infamous "permit system"
still remains in force, which forbids a man from even asking for
work unless he has signed an agreement not to belong to a
union, still not a word of protest can be raised by either party.
The reason is easy to see. One is as deep in the mud as the
other in the mire. While it was McKinley who sent the negro
troops to commit the outrages, yet they were sent at the request
of the Democratic-Populist governor, Steunenburg, who was
the most active agent in carrying out the whole transaction and
who has within the last few weeks declared that he was proud
of the part he acted. So it was that the Democratic party of
Ohio very promptly turned down Congressman Lentz, who at-
tempted to attract public attention to the matter, and the Demo-
cratic representatives in Congress voted solidly with the Repub-
licans against printing for public circulation the results of the in-
vestigation into the affair by the Congressional committee.
ANTI-EXPANSION.
All of these subjects having been discovered to be "too hot"
for use as issues by parties standing on the capitalist position, the
Democrats solved the problem by declaring "anti-militarism and
anti-expansion" to be the great "issues." The Republicans
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DANGEROUS QUESTIONS 105
promptly accepted this position and "pointed with pride'' to the
fact that through expansion they had been able to get rid of all
that the workers produced and trusted to being able to make
them believe that the greatest blessing laborers could enjoy was
to be kept steadily at work creating wealth for export, from which
they would be allowed to retain enough to enable them to keep
on working. But just as everything seemed thus happily settled
the Chinese trouble arose and all the forces of capitalism were
demanded to arouse the proper pitch of "patriotism." The stake
was too great to admit of any division in the ranks of the ruling
class. It would never do to let a little thing like a presidential
"issue" endanger the chance of getting a slice of China. So the
ridiculous spectacle is presented of this same Democratic party
standing on an anti-expansion platform and howling for war with
China. It really looks as if the pace of economic development
were getting too swift for modern capitalist politicians and as
if something would have to be done.
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THE KINGDOM OF COMPETITION.
The Kingdom of Competition is like unto a man that was a
Newsdealer. He findeth ten street arabs, and sayeth unto them:
"Go to, Why caper ye up and down the gutter all the day long?
Harken now and hear what I shall say unto thee. Stand ye
here in a row by this curbstone, and I will straightway place one
thousand papers on the curbstone which lieth over against you,
and it shall come to pass that when all things are in readiness
I will pucker up my lips and will make a shrill whistle unto you,
and when ye shall hear the sound thereof ye shall all with one
accord speedily cross over and take unto yourselves as many
papers as ye can lay hold of, and behold, for every two papers ye
sell ye shall receive one-half of one penny. If ye be diligent and
crafty ye shall presently become millionaires and all men shall
reverence you and call you blessed. ,,
Then when he had made an end of speaking, he did place the
papers on the curbstone according to all that he had said. After
the which he looked steadfastly upon them and puckering up the
lips of his mouth he made a shrill whistle therewith. And it came
to pass that when the street arabs heard the sound thereof that
with one accord they began to pass hastily over to the other side.
Now, because some were lesser than their fellows and not so
mighty, they were beaten down and trampled into the mire and
filth of the highway so that they came not near the papers at all.
When the swift and the strong came to the curbstone they strove
mightily one with another. Each laid hold of the same papers
and because of their confusion the papers were rent so that they
were no more of use to any man. Then he who was mightiest of
all took with him five-score papers that were not rent and went
his way and sold them.
And it came to pass than when he was returning unto the
Newsdealer to pay unto him that which he had won for him that
he might receive his recompense, behold, one who had been tram-
pled into the mire and the filth of the highway laid wait for him
and by strategy took from him one half of all that he possessed.
Then he who had sold the papers came unto the Newsdealer
saying:
"Behold, I was diligent and crafty, selling five-score papers I
took with me. But even now as I was returning hither, was I
taken in ambush and robbed of all I possessed. I pray thee,
therefore, pay me the pennies that thou hast promised me and
give me more papers to sell that I hunger not, thirst not, nor go
naked."
109
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THE KINGDOM OF COMPETITION 107
But the Newsdealer mocked him, saying:
"Ha, Ha, Go up, thou street urchin/ Thou art a thief. I bade
thee be crafty, but willed not that thou shouldst rob me. ,,
Then he cast him into a dungeon and kept him there until he
looked no more like one who might be trusted.
Again, the Kingdom of Competition is like unto a Sea in which
dwelt one great shark and many little fishes.
Among the little fishes were some wiser than their brethren.
These lifted up their voices and gave counsel to the many, say-
ing unto them:
"We are many, but we daily grow more lean. We strive day
and night, one with another, and by our strife prove that no one
loveth his brother. Behold, how fat the shark groweth. He
spreadeth his fins and his tail over the sea so that there is no
longer any room for fishes except before his face. All the hours
of the day his gluttonous eyes are upon us, and those who go
nigh unto him are swallowed by him. Our beauty fadeth, for the
sea is slimy with the venom he hath spued into it. Look well to
this matter. There lieth beyond us a day's journey, a sea, where-
in no shark may dwell. Let us go hither that we may live in
unity each striving for the other's glory and for his good. Then
shall our beauty fill the sea with its radiance and the waters shall
be sweet and pure."
Many who heard were glad and would have done according
to all that was said to them; but the shark, who had grown very
fearful lest they should do even as their brethren had counseled,
lifted up his voice and spake:
"Harken not unto those busy-bodies, for they are defamers,
speaking evil of dignitaries. They assail the powers ordained by
the maker of all things to rule over you. They are defilers of
the sea and the destroyers of your tranquility. Be wise, strive
diligently to come near to my person, for he that comes nighest
unto ine shall be like unto me. It shall be well with him. He -
shall cease from troubling, for he shall be down with me and we
shall be one."
Then one thought moved the great company of little fishes, and
they pushed each other with head and shoulders, striving to come
near to the person of the great shark. And it came to pass that
when many were come very near to him, he opened wide his
mouth with a great laugh and swallowed them. And great strife
and confusion prevailed in the sea, for those that were nearest to
the shark might not go from him because they that were behind
did thrust them nearer to him.
So he waxed exceeding gross for many days, and then it came
to pass that a mighty Sword-fish smote him so that he died.
Again the Kingdom of Competition is like unto a game of play
which is surnamed Rugby. They that be strong do make a heap
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108 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
of them that are weak. Then with much joy they do leap upon
their backs. They pull the hairs of their heads, they bite their
ears with their teeth and they smite them with their fists and
with their feet, shouting with a loud voice:
"O, Competition, live forever, for thou art the incentive to
noble deeds."
O, ye Sons of Men, get ye knowledge, get ye wisdom. Drive
before you every vision of the dreamers and sing, sing, sing:
"Glory, Glory, Glory be to Competition."
Walter A. Ratcliffe.
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BOOK REVIEWS.
Monopolies and Trusts, Dr. R. T. Ely, Macmillan & Co.
Although it is nowhere stated as a thesis the whole aim and
object of this book seems to be an attempt to disprove the
socialist position that competition tends to concentration and
monopoly. Aside from one chapter which is given up to a dis-
cussion of "The Law of Monopoly Price, ,, and which announces
as a "new law of monopoly charge'' that "The greater the intens-
ity of customary use, the higher the general average of econom-
ic well-being; and the more readily wealth is generally expended,
the higher the monopoly charge which will yield the largest net
returns/' which after all is only a cumbersome and academic way
of saying that the higher the standard of life the greater the room
for exploitation, nearly the entire book is an argument for the
thesis stated above. No one who reads this book can but feel
how far removed Dr. Ely is from the time when he was a repre-
sentative of the most advanced economic thought in this coun-
try. Then he was on the offensive against the fossilized Man-
chesterism of Laughlin and Sumner; today he is on the defensive
against the advancing socialist thought. The reason for this
is that notwithstanding Dr. Ely's exhaustive studies of socialism
he has always insisted upon ignoring its fundamental position,
that of the class struggle. He has always insisted upon consid-
ering it as a scheme of administration.
His whole position rests upon differences which he alleges
exist between industries, enabling them to be divided into two
classes, in only one of which the law of concentration of industry
exists. He holds that aside from a few special industries, such as
railways, telegraphs, telephones, gas, water works, etc., which he
designates as "natural monopolies," competition is destined to
continue. It is rather strange that one who is usually so careful
of his terms should continue to employ a word at once mislead-
ing and meaningless. The word "nature" is one that has long
been a refuge for quibblers and every social student knows what
valiant service it has done the cause of confusion under the
phrase of "natural rights." Nor does Dr. Ely in any way remove
this confusion by his attempted explanation. He says (p. 43):
"The term natural is here used in its well-understood and cus-
tomary sense, to indicate something external to man's mind. A
natural monopoly is one which, so far from giving expression
to the will of society, grows up apart from man's will as expressed
socially, and frequently in direct opposition to his will and de-
109
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y
110 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
sire thus expressed." But there is nothing more sure than that
the foundation of his so-called "natural monopolies" is in exact
accord with the "will and desire'' of the dominant class in our
present society and are an outgrowth of the social organization
which they support.
A rather ridiculous example of the existence of this very con-
fusion in the mind of the author himself is seen on page 62, where
he is trying to account for the fact that the ownership of street
railways in different cities is being concentrated into the hands
of a few individuals. Instead of taking the very obvious and
reasonable explanation, which, however, is not in accord with
his theory, that this is owing to the greater economy of unified
management, he says: "It does not seem that there is any natural
tendency that would lead to the ownership of all the street rail-
ways in the country by one combination of men. But . . .
they must invest their money in some way and they naturally turn
to street railways elsewhere. ,,
When on pages 77-80 he attempts a classification of monopo-
lies his whole distinction breaks down, and whenever he comes
to a point where his actual question at issue must be discussed
he simply dodges one side and takes refuge in ex cathedra state-
ments. He finally makes a classification including "local monop-
olies/' "social monopolies," and in general so broad as to make it
easily possible in the future to get any industry that may be
monopolized in under it and thus maintain the classification.
This is followed by page after page of general indefinite argu-
ments against the idea of monopoly existing outside this imagin-
ary fence. It almost seems as if it were sought by this example
of the cumulative method of arguing gone mad to so bewilder
the reader that he will have at least a general impression that the
fence is still intact. When this same method is applied to his ar-
guments they fall flat. Take the series of statements that appear
on p. 162 et seq. He attempts to explain away the fact of greater
economy through large purchases by saying that "bargains may
be picked up in a small way as well as in a large way." But he
should know that for the large buyer it is not a case of chance
"picking up/' but of an absolute knowledge and choice of a great
number of bargains entirely unknown to the smaller dealer. The
statement that the purchaser on a large scale may by such pur-
chasing raise the market price of the article bought is simply
foolish, and is something of which so careful a writer as Dr. Ely
should be ashamed* He knows full well that his illustration of
purchases of land has no connection with the subject under dis-
cussion and can only serve to confuse, while in commercial pur-
chases, which are supposed to be under discussion, the large
buyer does not increase the total demand, but simply takes what
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BOOK RE VIE WS 111
a large number of small buyers would have otherwise have pur-
chased. Moreover the large buyer has a choice as to whether he
shall buy in large or small quantities at a time, and has a much
better opportunity to know when and where to buy the entire out-
put advantageously than the small buyer. The whole argument
abounds in mere "ipse dixit" statements that really involve the
whole point at issue, as for example where he says concerning
purchasing on a large scale (p. 162), "one sooner or later reaches
the point of maximum effectiveness," or (p. 165), where he says
concerning the growth of industry, "a point of maximum efficien-
cy is sooner or later reached." At other times he betrays an ig-
norance of economic phenomena that in one with his great knowl-
edge of detail is almost inexcusable. For example, concerning
the relative stability of large and small companies, he says (p.
166), "many a small producer went through the crisis of 1893
with perfect safety; many a large company became bankrupt."
But the fact is that of the failures in the five years, 1893-7, 87 per
cent were of firms with less than $5,000 capital, while only .24
of one per cent were for over $50,000, which fact proves the exact
reverse of what Dr. Ely would have us believe.
Another example of this same inexcusable ignorance, only this
time it is of economic analysis rather than statistical facts, is seen
where he gravely gives as an example of the new fixed charges
that are supposed to appear with increased size that "a superin-
tendent that can be had for fifteen hundred dollars a year has to
give way to one who can command $10,000, $15,000 or even more.
The bookkeeping has to be reorganized and made more expen-
sive; new buildings must be constructed . . . spotters and
private detectives employed." Does it never occur to the writer
that the firm that makes these ''expensive" changes has it in its
power to choose between so doing and starting another small,
and according to Dr. Ely, a more economical business ? If they
adopted another system of bookkeeping it was because so doing
enabled them to keep better control of their business than the lit-
tle firm. If they employed spotters it was to stop thefts that
the smaller business could not afford to protect themselves
against.
What Dr. Ely has really done is to mistake a historical stage
for a social condition. The socialist has always recognized that
the process of concentration proceeds faster in some industries
than in others. The crystallization has various centers around
which the industrial molecules gather. These centers are what
Dr. Ely calls "natural monopolies." Already he is forced to
admit that the process has spread to allied industries which he
designates as "dependent monopolies," but he seems to think (to
change the figure) that the disease can be isolated and the capital-
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112 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
ist system preserved intact. The impression is left (p. 142) that
if his position regarding the existence of natural monopolies could
be maintained it would constitute a refutation of the socialist
philosophy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The con-
centration of industry is simply a corollary to the main socialist
argument, and is offered to show the administrative advantages
of a socialist organization of industry. It is also pointed out as
one of the things that will force a transformation of industry.
But it will do this, not simply by the formation of unbearable
monopolies, but by the accentuation of the class lines causing a
revolt of the producing classes long before the monopoly point
is reached in even a majority of industries. Here, as elsewhere,
the fact that Dr. Ely ignorantly or intentionally ignores the
philosophy of the class struggle, leads him into false positions.
The thesis of the book is, so far as socialism is concerned, unim-
portant if true, and is certainly not proven if admitted to be im-
portant.
A Country Without Strikes, Henry Demarest Lloyd, Double-
day, Page & Co.
This is a study of compulsory arbitration at work in New Zea-
land, but like all of Mr. Lloyd's books is written by one who is first
of all an advocate, then a reporter and lastly a student. If the book
is read by one who is already well grounded in economic phil-
osophy he will find much valuable information and suggestive
facts. But for one who is not able to separate the wheat from
the chaff the book is distinctly misleading and injurious. Fortu-
nately be makes a warning blunder in his first chapter which
should put the cautious reader on his guard for the rest of the
journey. He here talks about "social experiments" and "social
inventors," which is enough to testify to the incapacity of the
writer to correctly interpret social phenomena. Then if one reads
closely he will see that in spite of himself the author has succeed-
ed in picturing much that is wholly undesirable. He admits that
the aim of the Court of Arbitration has been "to preserve as near-
ly as possible the conditions in which it found the trade." But
this of all things is what labor does not want. Its whole struggle,
even within existing social organization, is to keep pace with
the advancing industrial development. It wants no judges who
"shall hold their destiny in his hands'' (p. 86) nor any state that
is powerful enough to force "the workingmen to go to work on
terms unsatisfactory to them." The whole system as outlined
by Mr. Lloyd, even taking his most favorable interpretation is an
economic slavery, that while it offers a present livelihood of a
trifle higher character than in older countries (although there is
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BOOK RE VIE WS 118
*o proof that it is higher than in other countries with similar un-
developed society) it is a complete deadener on all ideas of social
revolt by the workers and a guarantee of future slavery. The in-
telligent socialist will find in Mr. Lloyd's book some strong rea-
sons for opposing the New Zealand system.
"Socialists in French Municipalities/' Chas. H. Kerr & Co.
pamphlet, 32 p., in "Pocket Library of Socialism.'' We have
ncard much of what the English municipalities were doing, but
tew people are aware that only across the Channel in France very
much more work is being done. This is the first time that any
account of this work has been put in English, and this pamphlet
should receive a wide circulation.
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THE WORLD OF LABOR
[This department is edited by Max S. Hayes.]
•
At the quarterly meeting of the American Federation of Labor
Executive Council, in Denver, last month, negotiations were be-
gun with a view of amalgamating the American Federation of
Labor with the Western Federation of Labor. The latter body
is composed of a number of strong national, state and local or-
ganizations, including the strong Western Federation of Miners,
which union made the heroic fight in the Coeur d'Alenes, Idaho,
where over 400 miners were imprisoned in a bull-pen and sub-
jected to the most barbarous and inhuman treatment by the joint
orders of the Republican national administration, the Democratic-
Populistic state government and the Standard Oil trust. The
Western Federation of Labor is a progressive organization. At
its national convention, in May, the Federation declared, among
other things, that "we believe that the wage system should be
abolished and the production of labor be distributed under the
co-operative plan/' and "we regard public ownership and opera-
tion of the means of production and distribution as the logical
solution of the industrial problem, and respectfully urge all work-
ing people to give the subject the thoughtful consideration its im-
portance deserves." The Federation also called upon organized
labor everywhere to study the economic and political questions in
union rooms and to strike at the ballot box for industrial freedom.
If the amalgamation is perfected it will mean a powerful union of
unions in this country, and the infusion of still more progressive
blood in the organized labor forces.
Strikes are on in nearly every industrial center of the country.
Next in importance to great struggles in the building trades in
Chicago and the street railway business of St Louis is the bitter
fight between the cigarmakers of New York and their bosses.
Several months ago half a dozen of the large firms combined
and locked out their journeymen to prevent them from aiding
the strikers of the Kerbs, Wertheim & Schiffer Co., a notorious
concern which paid starvation wages to its employes who manu-
factured cigars for the jobbing trade. Policemen's clubs and in-
junctions have not deterred the men, women and children locked
out, and they have stood out as a unit for months. Nearly
$70,000 has been collected and paid to the unorganized strikers,
114
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THE WORLD OF LABOR 115
the unionists drawing regular strike benefits. — Nearly a hundred
thousand molders in Cleveland have locked horns with the
bosses, who also have a national organization. The employers
are attempting to reduce wages 10 cents a day throughout the
district and Geveland is the battle-ground. The strongest mold-
ers' union in the country is in that city, and much will depend on
this fight. — There are other strikes on of minor importance in
many places.
The work at American Federation of Labor headquarters is
piling up to such an extent that the report of charters issued for
May has only been issued recently. There were 119 charters
granted to local unions, seven to city central bodies, and one to
a state branch in that month. These charters do not include new
unions formed in organized trades, the national bodies of which
charter locals direct. The printers average nearly ten charters a
month, the carpenters, machinists, painters and other crafts fol-
lowing close behind. The work of organization this year is un-
precedented, as is made manifest not only in new unions organ-
ized, but in the steady increase in membership of the unions in
existence, and the Louisville convention of the Federation is
destined to become a national parliament, greater and more repre-
sentative than any similar meeting this year, excepting only the
conventions of the two dominant political parties.
Last year the Canadian Trades Council, which is a similar
body to the A. F. of L., declared for independent political action.
This position was taken because its legislative committee re-
ported that it was impossible to secure tne passage of labor bills
in parliament or provincial legislatures or even municipal bodies.
The council committee having the resolution for independent pol-
itics in charge was composed of old party men, who reported
adversely, but the delegates arose almost as one man and pro-
claimed their political independence. As a result, the trade
unionists of Canada are working with the Socialists to secure a
voice in legislative bodies. In British Columbia three more labor
men have been elected to Parliament, and the capitalistic news-
papers and politicians have become panic-stricken. They admit
that candidates who stand on the most socialistic platform are
the most to be feared.
Fully 250,000 workers have been out of employment during the
past month in the iron and steel, tin plate, glass, textile, boot and
shoe and kindred industries. The cause is given as "dullness of
trade" and wage adjustments. The iron, steel and tin plate
workers will go back into the mills, when they secure sufficient
orders to start, at about the same rates they received in the past
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116 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
year — though many of the men are dissatisfied, claiming that
trusts have increased the price of the necessities of life. The
flass workers will receive slight concessions, as there is a fight on
etween the trust and the independents, each bidding for the
skilled men, the trust having gone so far as to issue stock
(watered?) to the workers. The textile workers will consider
themselves lucky if they secure last year's scale, the bosses having
stated that when the mills were closed that it was either that or a
reduction. The boot and shoe workers will hardly suffer a reduc-
tion, as they are quite thoroughly organized and will not submit
to a cut.
North Carolina is now preparing to follow in the footsteps of
several of the other Southern states and disfranchise the negro
voters. The Democrats of that state, under the leadership of
Charles B. Aycock, the candidate for governor, have been con-
ducting a "red shirt" campaign, which has depended for its en-
thusiasm upon references to the Ku Klux outrages that followed
the civil war. An amendment to the constitution is proposed
which will disfranchise one hundred thousand negro voters. It
is significant that while such laws have been enacted by the Demo-
crats throughout the South, there has been no attempt by the
Republicans to enforce the penalty for such action which the
United States constitution provides. Did the Republicans so de-
sire they could largely cut down the Democratic strength in
Congress and also deprive them of a number of electoral votes.
But they would far rather see the Democrats in power than lose
this chance of depriving a large portion of the laboring population
of the right of suffrage.
It is worthy of record that the Wisconsin State Federation of
Labor is a progressive body. At its recent convention in She-
boygan, the Federation declared, by a vote of 45 to 9, for "the
collective ownership by the people of the means of production and
distribution. By this is meant that when an industry becomes
centralized so as to assume the form of a trust or monopoly, and
hence a menace to the best interests of the people, such industry
should be assumed by the government. This is true protection
to the weak, those least represented in legislation." The unions
are steadily moving forward despite the chicanery of enemies
within and without.
The progressive labor press of America is highly pleased at the
outcome of the recent elections in France, Belgium, Italy and
Austria, where in every instance the Socialists won new victories,
increasing their general vote as well as membership in legislative
bodies. These triumphs in Europe are having the effect of at-
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THE WORLD OF LABOR 117
tracting the attention of American working people, and as a re-
sult nearly every labor and reform paper in the country is printing
an increasing amount of matter regarding Socialism, which is be-
ing studied with more interest than ever before. Of course, the
capitalistic press intentionally suppresses this highly important
European news, but it becomes known for all that.
The Socialist Labor party and the Social Democratic party
have united and placed tickets in the field in the following states:
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut,
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, Washington, California, Okla-
homa, Kansas, Texas, Michigan and Kentucky. Union will prob-
ably be perfected and tickets nominated in several more states
this month. Many active Populists and independent voters of a
progressive character are joining the new movement, as are also
trade unionists in the industrial centers.
A silly story has been sent broadcast by the Democratic party
managers. It is to the effect that Eugene V. Debs will with-
draw on October i as the Social Democratic candidate for presi-
dent. Mr. Debs sent out a denial, but it has been generally sup-
pressed by Republican as well as Democratic organs. The season
when the campaign liar secures his spoil has arrived.
The printers of Augusta, Ga., just when they believed they had
their strike won against a daily paper, were injunctioned by the
courts, and now their fight is becoming hopeless.
The boycott against the New York Sun is still on. It is charged
that J. Pierpont Morgan, the railway magnate, and John D.
Rockefeller are standing behind the Sun, and that they are will-
ing to supply money indefinitely to defeat the printers in this fight.
A Massachusetts court has decided that machines in the textile
industry may be run at night, and thus another "labor law" that
cost the workers much time and money to secure its enactment
has been knocked into a cocked hat, unless some higher court
steps in and protects enslaved and worn-out women and children
by reversing the decision, which will hardly be the case.
A late report from St. Louis is to the effect that the employers
of that city are displaying their class interests openly by threaten-
ing to discharge their workers for refusing to ride on boycotted
street cars. The same trick was resorted to in Cleveland a year
ago. It gradually became effective. Yet a whole lot of people
continue to prate that "the interests of capital and labor are iden-
tical."
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118 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
American trade unionists are disposed to say mean things about
Senator Hawley, and all because, they allege, he "held up" the
eight-hour bill in the Senate. Mr. Hawley, during political cam-
paigns, boasts of "having been a workingman himself once" — &
printer, by the way — and, therefore, possesses all the requirements
of the politician who is "the workingman's friend ,, in season and
out.
The striking laundry workers of Dayton, O., have been injunc-
tioned by the courts at the request of the Manufacturers' Asso-
ciation of that city. — There is more talk of forming a national
union of laundry workers.
New York bakers are compelled to strike to secure the enforce-
ment of the state ten-hour law for their craft. As usual the law-
less capitalists have no use for labor legislation, and "anarchy
reigns," so far as they are concerned.
The crucible steel trust, with $50,000,000 capital, has been
swung into line with the 400 and odd other capitalistic combines
that are now in existence in the United States. Nearly every-
thing in the iron and steel business is now trustified, and already
the chief promoters are talking of forming a trust of trusts, which
is the highest point the capitalistic system can reach. Then what?
Socialism?
In Colorado the State Federation of Labor nominated a state
ticket of trade unionists several months ago. The politicians be-
came frightened, pulled wires, and a few days ago the ticket was
withdrawn by a close vote. The minority, however, is in rebel-
lion, declaring that it will not be coerced by the old party politi-
cians, and that the ticket originally nominated will stand.
The American Federation of Labor has decided to levy an as-
sessment of 2 cents a member to aid the New York cigarmakers.
The sum of $15,000 will be realized.
After several years of fighting, the two national unions of paint-
ers have finally amalgamated. The new organization, it is stated,
will start out with a membership of about 25,000.
The Labor League is the name of a new secret organization
that has started in and is spreading through Georgia. Only
wage-workers are eligible as members.
Iowa Socialists convene Oct. 10 to nominate a ticket.
Nothing appears to have come of the widely-heralded Ruskin
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THE WORLD OF LABOR 119
Hall movement in this country. A month ago Messrs. Bower-
man and Sexton came over from London to start a "labor col-
lege," and it was stated that they carried with them $20,000 with
which to begin operations. They were to have addressed the
unionists in the principal cities, but after speaking in a few
places they quietly departed for home. The $20,000 is now said
to have been "only pledged" by a Mr. Vrooman, who gained
some notoriety in this country a few years ago with his labor
church, co-operative colonies, political fusion, capitalistic reform
and other schemes.
The trade unionists and socialists of Holland have just com-
bined. The former have heretofore largely supported the anar-
chistic propaganda and abstained from voting, but now 24 na-
tional bodies, in convention assembled, have declared in favor of
supporting the Social Democratic party.
The trust movement continues to make headway in England.
The latest octopus given birth to is a large electrical combine of
57 companies.
The highest court in New South Wales, Australia, has decided
that employers must give preference to union workmen. The
Employers' Federation threatens to appeal the case to the Privy
Council in England, but it is thought unlikely that such a step
will be taken. In Australia workingmen have cultivated the habit
of taking independent political action. In America the majority
of workers are satisfied to be party slaves, and for that reason
they are economic slaves as well and find that employers give
non-unionists preference.
The trade unionists and Socialists of England are declaring in
conventions and by resolution that they are opposed to the gov-
ernment carrying on military operations in the Transvaal or
China. The Hon. John Morley and a portion of the Liberal-Radical
party seems to side with them, the former stating in a speech at
Oxford that, as between militarism and socialism he would choose
the latter.
The Socialists and laborites of the Argentine Republic, South
America, held a national convention last month. They report a
gratifying increase of membership in the organizations, a good
financial condition, and steady spread of socialist doctrine.
Once more the German government has notified the railway
employes that if they are caught talking socialism or handling
literature bearing on the subject they will be discharged. The
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120 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
government owns the railways, and this is a sample of capitalistic
state socialism that the opportunists and step-at-a-time reformers,
who sneer at "class-consciousness," will do well to consider.
In Thuringen and in Waldenburg, Germany, the Social Demo-
crats were triumphant in bye-elections for members of Parliament.
In Muhlhausen they lost.
Just before adjourning, the Socialists hammered a bill through
the French Chamber of Deputies providing for compulsory arbi-
tration.
In San Domingo, in the West Indies, the trade unionists and
Socialists are forming a Labor party.
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EDITORIAL
THE CHINESE SITUATION.
Events during the past month in relation to matters in the
Orient have served to emphasize one point very distinctly, and
that is the absolute ignorance that prevails regarding the facts.
There is scarcely any possible combination of the factors engaged
that has not been telegraphed as actually existing and contra-
dictory and conflicting statements have followed one another
in close succession. This is a fact which it will be well to bear
in mind through the long series of events upon which we are
just entering. Whatever else is true it is practically certain that
the average press dispatches will be false and the diplomatic
ones still more so.
The great capitalist nations of the world are engaged in what
promises to be the most bold faced plundering expedition of the
age, and they will have the greatest of incentives to conceal their
actions from the laborers who must do the fighting for them.
If they were able to do this so skillfully at the time of the Com-
mune, when Paris teemed with newspaper correspondents and
every mail could bring the truth to the outer world, how much
easier it will be in China, cut off by almost impossible barriers of
language, distance and customs from those who are to be de-
ceived. The censorship of Manila will be nothing in comparison
with the one that will cover all points of communication with the
seat of trouble in the Orient.
Hence if we are to arrive at the facts it must be largely through
deduction as to the interests involved and the ends sought. An
example of the way in which these interests are at present dis-
torting news is seen in the reports of the massacre of the lega-
tions and foreigners. It is of the greatest importance to the
capitalist nations to arouse resentment against China. It is not
simply the old story of blackening a character before striking its
possessor although that motive undoubtedly plays its part. But
more important than this is the need of arousing the "patriotic"
spirit at home which will provide with readiness the necessary
funds and volunteers. So it is that while the very fact of the
massacre is very much in doubt many of the daily papers have
been filled with long details of the punishments and tortures in-
flicted by the Chinese, not a few of which accounts have been
richly illustrated with photographs and drawings, apparently
121
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122 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
"made on the spot," and it is a sad commentary on the intelli-
gence of the American reader that these tactics seem not to be met
with the slightest disapproval, or to throw the least doubt upon
the credibility of the press as a means of gathering and dissem-
inating news.
The more that comes to be known of the trouble within China
itself the more the socialist philosophy of society is justified. It
was pointed out by Li Hung Chang some time ago that one of
the reasons why China did not wish Western civilization was be-
cause she did not wish the labor problem that accompanied that
civilization. . But whether she wished it or not that civilization
has come and with it the "labor problem. ,, This was most start-
lingly set forth in an article published in the Chicago Tribune
by Li Teschung, former superintendent of the Secret Cabinet in
Pekin. The article is such a remarkable statement of the situation
and complete justification of the socialist philosophy that it is here
given almost entire:
"The labor question — or, perhaps, more precisely expressed, the
socialistic question — is at the bottom of China's troubles. An
imperial investigation into the causes of the present unlawful up-
risings will show that.
'Three years ago the Tien Tsin-Pekin railway line was opened;
for the last twelvemonth or longer it has been in active operation,
while smaller auxiliary or branch roads have sprung into exist-
ence at intervals of from thirty to forty days all along. And as the
railway net spread and as new connections by rail are constantly
made, the labor market becomes daily more demoralized — that is,
opportunities for work grow less and less.
'Traffic between the coast and the metropolis, and especially be-
tween the commercial centers Tien Tsin and Pekin, is enormous
— hundreds of thousands of people lived by it from time imme-
morial. They found their daily bread on the land and waterways
as carters, carriers, forwarders, and helpers, generally. The horse
owner, drayman, or expressman, the caravan leader, driver,
camel, donkey, and mule attendant; the shipowner, boatman,
sailor — all made a modest but assured living along the road, as
their fathers had done before them. They had the stock, the
custom, the experience. They were good for this business and
for no other. Then there were the inn and boarding-house keep-
ers supported by the passing crowd and dependent upon it; the
wagonmakers, sailmakers, saddlers and feed merchants. The bus,
carryall, and livery stable people likewise transported passengers.
The number of officials alone who go to Pekin half a dozen times
or oftener per year reaches into the thousands, and the masses of
candidates for government positions going to the capital for their
examination are ten times greater.
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EDITORIAL 188
"And as the signal for the first train from Taku to Tien Tsin-
Pekin was given all these individuals, merchants, owners of draft
animals and of other means of transportation; all these drivers,
eating-house keepers, these workmen and helpers, lost their
means of livelihood — lost it without hope of retrieving their for-
tune in stock or other work
"The branch roads robbed another class of poorly paid but con-
tented people of their only chance for keeping body and soul to-
gether. The branch roads wiped out the coal carrier — the poor
devil who on his own or his donkey's back transported black dia-
monds to the consumer, often covering hundreds of miles, plod-
ding patiently for a trifle. European and American journals
have often made fun of this antediluvian way of carrving coal, as
they called it, but it suited the people who lived by it well
enough.
"The unemployed — at least the chronic unemployed — were un-
known in China before the arrival of the steam engine and freight
car, but for the last twelve or fifteen months the territory between
the Gulf of Pechili, Changting-Pu, and Pekin has been overrun
with them.
"And the disfranchised men have not been in good humor —
hungry people generally are not. Still, they might have con-
tinued to suffer patiently — for at bottom the Chinaman loves
peace and is capable of much endurance — if it had not been for
the militant class of must-be-idlers. For the railway hurt the pro-
fessional private police, also known as Boxers, no less than the
industrial and laboring classes already mentioned.
"In the country the Boxers would probably pass under the
name of athletes — that's what they really are — strong men drilled
in the use of arms, who sell their prowess to those in quest of pro-
tection. In ante-railway days if a man of any consequence
went traveling he hired a couple of Boxers to save him from mo-
lestation by beggars and sneak thieves and to protect him against
footpads and robbers. No caravan started 'cross country save
under the conduct of Boxers; a transport of ready money or val-
uables without the attendance of Boxers was never dreamt of.
Women and children moved from town to country under the
strong arm of Boxers; even the government and the mandarins
employed them continuously in one capacity or another.
"But with the advent of the railway system the occupation of
private policemen or bodyguards became obsolete. Those who
use the steam cars need no special protectors, and money trans-
ports are quicker and safer by rail than in the midst of any army
of Boxers bristling with crossbows, spears, or even rifles.
"While the poor, half-starved and meek Chinese laborer might
never have summoned up courage enough to seek redress for the
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124 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
grievous wrong heaped upon him by the hated innovation, it was
but natural for the athletic Boxer, drilled to earn his living by
fisticuffs, to raise the hand of revolt. Born to live by his prowess,
he uses violence to win back, if possible, the bread of which he is
deprived. His argument is against law and order; society would
be doomed if it were permitted to prevail; yet from the Boxers*
standpoint its psychological and physiological soundness cannot
be denied.
"Thus the original dispute between wage earners and monopoly
broadened into a full-fledged social question with a political lin-
ing.
"To sum up: Fear of starvation roused the anger of the Chi-
nese populace against a useful innovation; the bread question
grew into a political grievance and culminated in the hatred of
foreigners and in open revolt against the government, for the
Manchu dynasty is as foreign to the country in Chinese eyes as
if it were Prussian or Anglo-Saxon.
"These are the facts; they show conclusively that the present
troubles were caused by unhappy social conditions over which the
government had no control and which absolutely lacked political
motive. That the original bread riot or economic movement de-
veloped into a political movement — that is no reason why its or^
igin should be obscured and its motive doubted.
"The real why and wherefore of the uprising is moreover made
plain by the fact that the rioters are not content with attacking
foreigners. Their lust for vengeance strikes their own country-
men as well. And here another aspect of the labor situation
comes into view: The foreigners, when hiring Chinese labor,
. prefer to employ converts/'
It is becoming more evident every day that in tackling the Chi-
nese puzzle capitalism finds itself in the presence of the greatest
problem that has yet been put before it. Whether in its present
almost decrepit state it will be able to solve it or not, even to its
own satisfaction, is something that is worrying many of its ablest
defenders. What shall be done with China after the troops have
marched to Pekin? How will the outlying provinces be "civil-
ized?" How shall they be policed and exploited? If the policy
of the "open door'' is maintained who shall be "door tender"? If
China is to be divided up how are the pieces to be apportioned?
These are questions that it will puzzle the diplomats and politi-
cians of capitalism to answer, and that unless they do answer
may easily prove that last jar that will complete the downfall of
our present social system.
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FOREIGN HAPPENINGS
UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN BELGIUM
The two most important events in the socialist world, news of
'which has reached America since our last issue, is the struggle
for universal suffrage in Belgium and the amalgamation of the
socialist parties in Holland. Regarding the first of these, "La
Peuple," the Belgian socialist daily, gives an outline of the suc-
cessive steps that will be taken to secure the desired end. In
the first place, there is a series of public meetings and general ag-
itation through the press and by means of pamphlets, etc. Then
the various municipalities in the control of the socialists will send
in memorials demanding the reform. Next the trades unions
and co-operatives will proceed along the same lines. On the
meeting of the Chamber of Deputies a great mass meeting was
held, followed by interpellations by the socialist deputies in the
Chamber. This is to be followed by an attempt to introduce
and carry the bill. If defeated, the agitation will be increased,
and a campaign of obstruction pursued in the Chamber. As a
last resort preparations are being made to call a universal strike,
such as gained them the limited suffrage they now have, and
which is, with the vast resources at the disposal of the co-opera-
tives, sure to be successful. At the present time there is a system of
plural voting in operation, which in the majority of cases works
greatly to the advantage of the capitalist parties. The following
proclamation has been issued by the Parti Ouvrier and is pub-
lished, with the accompanying comment, in a late issue of La
Peuple:
"Comrades 1 The reign of falsehood must disappear. It is
already condemned by the public conscience. It belongs to you
to give it the finishing stroke. We count upon your energy and
upon your steadfastness, as you may count upon ours. From
this time in every town of the country let the clarions of our prop-
aganda resound. In every industrial center let our comrades
busy themselves with strengthening the unions, those batallions
of the militant socialists. And the day when the Parti Ouvrier
shall give the signal of assault, the day when your deputies shall
engage in the iinal battles, we have the assurance that the for-
midable movement which last year succeeded in blocking the
progress of reaction will reapoear more resistless than ever to
break the last resistance of the party of fraud, and to open wide
the doors of the parliament to UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE/'
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126 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIAL IS T RE VIE W
A most important phase of this movement is seen in the in-
clusion of women in the demand for universal suffrage. This
was opposed by a few of the socialists on the ground of the
ignorance that still exists among the Belgian women, and which
is so great as to almost pass belief on the part of American
readers. Only a very small per cent, can either read or write,
while almost none have any interest in or knowledge of any
public questions. It was pointed out that the granting of the
franchise to women, while they are still so completely under
clerical domination, might easily mean a temporary setback to
socialism. But none of these things deterred the Belgian com-
rades in their determination to stand by their principles. Dep-
uty Vander Velde showed that all the objections offered to
conferring the suffrage upon women had been urged by the
Liberals against giving the same right to laborers. It was also
shown that on many points woman was peculiarly a sufferer
under the capitalist system and would prove a valuable ally of
socialism when once her allegiance had been secured.
As always happens when the socialists attempt to take a deci-
sive step, the Liberals, who have been making great protesta-
tions of their friendship for the workers and their desire for re-
form, are now found hand in hand with the clericals, prepared to
block the movement for universal suffrage. The socialists have
boldly announced that they propose to have their right to vote
at once, and declare that they will proceed by gradual but rapid
steps from agitation to parliamentary action and obstruction,
and after these have failed recourse will be had to the universal
strike, and as a last final resource, street riots. Those who know
how all these methods were used in this same regular succession
and with increasing power in gaining the present restricted suf-
frage will realize what it means by the present program. It
means certain victory.
HOLLAND
Concerning the movement in Holland, we take the following
also from La Peuple:
At the recent conference of the Socialist party of Holland,
held at Amsterdam, resolutions were passed declaring the neces-
sity of the action of the militant proletariat on both the economic
and political ground, and declaring that the organizations for
these purposes constituted the two indispensable weapons with
which to carry on the class struggle.
After a long and moderate discussion, it was decided that the
Socialistenbond, the old socialist organization, having expelled
from its ranks the anarchists and followers of Domela Neuwen-
huis, and which has for its organ the weekly paper, "Recht voor
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FOREIGN HAPPENINGS 127
Alien/' should dissolve itself and merge itself in the Social-De-
mokritische Arbeiderparty, and accept as their organ the daily
paper of the latter organization as the official party organ. The
common organization now has three deputies in the legislative
chamber, Troelstra, Van Kol, and Schaper. The unanimous
adoption of this resolution by the 43 delegates at the convention
is complete confirmation of the union now existing in the social-
ist movement of the Netherlands, which will mean increased
strength against the two equally dangerous enemies — capitalism
and anarchy.
ANARCHY AND SOCIALISM
The shooting of King Humbert, of Italy, has let loose all the
capitalist press in wholesale denunciation of all those who oppose
the existing social order. Although there has not as yet been
the slightest evidence to show that the act was anything more
than that of a half-crazed fanatic acting on his own responsi-
bility, and while anyone who wishes might easily know that the
socialists have ever "been the deadly opponents of the anarchists,
still there have been plenty of papers ready to demand more
stringent agitation against the socialists in America because the
anarchists of Patterson, New Jersey, were acquainted with a
crazy fool who shot an Italian king* This is the story that has
repeated itself over and over again in the history of the social
revolution. The "reds" have always been the "dearest foes" of
capitalism. The capitalists class care nothing for the lives of a
few of their puppets who may occupy positions of prominence in
the governments of the world. They know, if the anarchists do
not, that it is even easier to get new kings and emperors who will
do their bidding than it is to find scabs to take the place of strik-
ing workers. But they also know that the steady, quiet, resistless
advance of socialism is numbering the days of exploitation and
that unless that advance is checked labor will soon achieve its
freedom and exploiters must perforce become producers. Hence
they seek for every opportunity to repress the socialist move-
ment. But the socialist refuses to fall into their trap. He real-
izes the hopelessness of open resistance with all the powers of
government in the hands of his opponent. So he fights within the
legal bounds that capitalism has itself prescribed, and conforms
in every way to the demands of the society he is opposing. But
if he will not himself commit crimes he must be punished vicari-
ously. So he is accused of the crimes of his opponents, the
anarchists, and punished for that. This has long been the prac-
tice in Europe and recent events have shown that we may expect
the same thing here. The assassination of King Humbert is
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128 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
being used as an argument for the suppression of socialist meet-
ings on the streets of Chicago. The most absurd stories have
been circulated about the happenings at such meetings and the
police have shown an unwonted activity in annoying the social-
ist speakers. But such tactics react upon their perpetrators and
.educate faster than the socialist speakers they suppress.
ANNOUNCEMENT
We regret to be compelled to announce that sickness made it
impossible for Mr. E. V. Debs to prepare the article on the
"Outlook for Socialism in the United States," which had been
announced for this number. However, he has promised that it
will be ready in time for the September number. The next
number will also have an article by Mr. Job Harriman, the
socialist candidate for vice-president, on "A Comparison of the
Democratic and Republican Platforms in the Present Cam-
paign." These two articles alone will make this number one
*that will be desired by every socialist. Besides these, there will
be an article by Robert Rives LaMonte on "The Essentials of
Scientific Socialism, ,, which is one of the best statements of the
■fundamental principles of socialism ever put forth. Articles have
also been promised by Prof. I. Hourwich and Rev. H. S. Vail,
while several communications are expected from European so-
cialists. Taken altogether the September number promises to
"be far ahead of any socialist publication yet issued in the Eng-
lish language. Arrangements have already been made for fu-
ture numbers, which insure that the present high standard will
"be constantly improved upon as time passes.
The article in this number by Paul Lafargue will be reprinted
in pamphlet form for sale separately. The opportunity will then
be taken to make several changes which were sent by the author
!too late for correction in this issue.
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T25 INTERNATIONAL
SOCIALIST REVIEW
VoL I SEPTEMBER, 1900 No. 3
OUTLOOK FOR SOCIALISM IN THE UNITED
STATES.
The sun of the passing century is setting upon scenes of ex-
traordinary activity in almost every part of our capitalistic old
planet. Wars and rumors of wars are of universal prevalence.
In the Philippines our soldiers are civilizing and christianizing
the natives in the latest and most approved styles of the art,
and at prices ($13 per month) which commend the blessing to
the prayerful consideration of the lowly and oppressed every-
where.
In South Africa the Brtish legions are overwhelming the Boers
with volleys of benedictions inspired by the same beautiful phi-
lanthropy in the name of the meek and lowly Nazarene; while
in China the heathen hordes, fanned into frenzy by the sordid
spirit of modern commercial conquest, are presenting to the
world a carnival of crime almost equalling the "refined ,, exhi-
bitions of the world's "civilized" nations.
And through all the flame and furore of the fray can be
heard the savage snarlings of the Christian "dogs of war" as
they fiercely glare about them, and with jealous fury threaten to
fly at one another's throats to settle the question of supremacy
and the spoil and plunder of conquest.
The picture, lurid as a "chamber of horrors," becomes com-
plete in its gruesome ghastliness when robed ministers of Christ
solemnly declare that it is all for the glory of God and the ad-
vancement of Christian civilization.
This, then, is the closing scene of the century as the curtain
slowly descends upon the blood-stained stage — the central fig-
ure, the pious Wilhelm, Germany's sceptered savage, issuing his
imperial "spare none*' decree in the sang froid of an Apache
chief — a fitting climax to the rapacious regime of the capitalist
system.
Cheerless indeed would be the contemplation of such san-
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180 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
guinary scenes were the light of Socialism not breaking upon
mankind. The skies of the East are even now aglow with the
dawn; its coming is heralded by thfe dispelling of shadows, of
darkness and gloom. From the first tremulous scintillation that
gilds the horizon to the sublime march to meridian splendor the
light increases till in mighty flood it pours upon the world.
From out of the midnight of superstition, ignorance and
slavery the disenthralling, emancipating sun is rising. I am not
gifted with prophetic vision, and yet I see the shadows vanish-
ing. I behold near and far prostrate men lifting their bowed
forms from the dust. I see thrones in the grasp of decay; des-
pots relaxing their hold upon scepters, and shackles falling, not
only from the limbs but from the souls of men.
It is therefore with pleasure that I respond to the invitation
of the editor of the International Socialist Review to present
my views upon the "Outlook for Socialism in the United States."
Socialists generally will agree that.the past year has been marked
with a propaganda of unprecedented activity and that the senti-
ment of the American people in respect to Socialism has under-
gone a most remarkable change. It would be difficult to imagine
a more ignorant, bitter and unreasoning prejudice than that of
the American people against Socialism during the early years
of its introduction by the propagandists from the other side. I
never think of these despised and persecuted "foreign invaders"
without a feeling of profound obligation, akin to reverence, for
their noble work in laying the foundations deep and strong,
under the most trying conditions, of the ^American movement.
The ignorant mass, wholly incapable of grasping their splendid
teachings or appreciating their lofty motives, reviled against
them. The press inoculated the public sentiment with intoler-
ance and malice which not infrequently found expression through
the policeman's club when a few of the pioneers gathered to en-
graft the class-conscious doctrine upon their inhospitable "free
born" American fellow citizens. Socialism was cunningly asso-
ciated with "anarchy and bloodshed/' and denounced as a "foul
foreign importation" to pollute the fair, free soil of America,
and every outrage to which the early agitators were subjected
won the plaudits of the people. But they persevered in their
task; they could not be silenced or suppressed. Slowly they
increased in number and gradually the movement began to take
root and spread, over the country. The industrial conditions
consequent upon the development of capitalist production were
now making themselves felt and socialism became a fixed and
increasing factor in the economic and political affairs of the
nation.
The same difficulties which other countries had experienced
in the process of party organization have attended the develop-
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OUTLOOK FOR SOCIALISM IN UNITED STATES 181
ment of the movement here, but these differences, which relate
mainly to tactics and methods of propaganda, are bound to dis-
appear as the friction of the jarring factions smoothens out the
rough edges and adjusts them to a concrete body — a powerful
section in the great international army of militant socialism.
In the general elections of 1898 upwards of 91,000 votes were
cast for the socialist candidates in the United States, an increase
in this "off year'' of almost two hundred per cent over the gen-
eral elections of two years previous, the presidential year of
1896. Since the congressional elections of 1898, and more par-
ticularly since the municipal and state elections following, which
resulted in such signal victories in Massachusetts, two members
of the legislature and a mayor, the first in America, being elected
by decided majorities — since then, socialism has made rapid
strides in all directions and the old politicians no longer reckon
it as a negative quantity in making their forecasts and calculat-
ing their pluralities and majorities.
The subject has passed entirely beyond the domain of sneer
and ridicule and now commands serious treatment. Of course
it is violently denounced by the capitalist press and by all the
brood of subsidized contributors to magazine literature, but this
only confirms the view that the advance of socialism is very
properly recognized by the capitalist class as the one cloud upon
the horizon which portends an end to the system in which they
have waxed fat, insolent and despotic through the exploitation
of their countless wage-working slaves.
In school and college and church, in clubs and public halls
everywhere, socialism is the central theme of discussion, and
its advocates, inspired by its noble principles, are to be found
here, there and in all places ready to give or accept challenge
to battle. In the cities the corner meetings are popular and
effective. But rarely is such a gathering now molested by the
"authorities" and then only where they have just been inaugu-
rated. They are too numerously attended by serious, intelligent .
and self-reliant men and women to invite interference.
Agitation is followed by organization, and the increase of
branches, sections and clubs goes forward with extraordinary
activity in every part of the land.
In New England the agitation has resulted in quite a general
organization among the states, with Massachusetts in the
lead; and the indications are that, with the vigorous prosecu-
tion of the campaign already inaugurated, a tremendous increase
in the vote will be polled in the approaching- National elections.
New York and Pennsylvania will show surprising socialist re-
turns, while Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Ken-
tucky will all round up with a large vote. Wisconsin has already
a great vote to her credit and will increase it largely this year.
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132 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
In the west and northwest, Kansas, Iowa and Minnesota will
forge to the front, and so also will Nebraska, the Dakotas, Mon-
tana, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Colorado. California is
expected to show an immense increase and the returns from
there will not disappoint the most sanguine. In the southwest,
Texas is making a stirring campaign and several papers, here-
tofore Populist, will support our candidates and swell the socialist
vote, which will be an eye-opener when announced.
On the whole, the situation could scarcely be more favorable
and the final returns will more than justify our sanguine expec-
tations.
It must not be overlooked, however, when calculations are
made, that this is a presidential year and that the general results
will not be so favorable as if the elections were in an "off year/''
Both the Republican and Democratic parties will, as usual, strain
every nerve to whip the "voting kings" into line and every con-
ceivable influence will be exerted to that end. These vast ma-
chines operate with marvelous precision and the wheels are al-
ready in motion. Corruption funds, National, state and munici-
pal, will flow out like lava tides; promises will be as plentiful as
autumn leaves; from ten thousand platforms the Columbian ora-
tor will agitate the atmosphere, while brass bands, torch-light
processions, glittering uniforms and free whiskey, dispensed by
the "ward-heeler, ,, will lend their combined influence to steer
the "patriots" to the capitalist chute that empties into the ballot-
box.
The campaign this year will be unusually spectacular. The
Republican party "points with pride" to the "prosperity*'
of the country, the beneficent results of the "gold standard" and
the "war record" of the administration. The Democratic party
declares that "imperialism" is the "paramount" issue and that the
country is certain to go to the "demnition bow-wows'' if Demo-
cratic office holders are not elected instead of the Republicans.
. The Democratic slogan is "The Republic vs. the Empire," ac-
companied in a very minor key by 16 to i and "direct legislation
where practical.''
Both these capitalist parties are fiercely opposed to trusts,
though what they propose to do with them is not of sufficient
importance to require even a hint in their platforms.
Needless is it for me to say to the thinking working man that
he has no choice between these two capitalist parties, that they
are both pledged to the same system and that whether the one
or the other succeeds, he will still remain the wage-working
slave he is to-day.
What but meaningless phrases are "imperialism," "expansion,"
"free silver," "gold standard," etc., to the wage-worker? The
large capitalists represented by Mr. McKinley and the small
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OUTLOOK FOR SOCIALISM IN UNITED STATES 188
capitalists represented: by Mr. Bryan are interested in these
"issues," but they do not concern the working class.
- What the workingmen of the country are profoundly interested
in is the private ownership of the means of production and dis-
tribution, the enslaving and degrading wage-system in which
they toil for a pittance at the pleasure of their masters and are
bludgeoned, jailed or shot when they protest — this is the cen-
tral, controlling, vital issue of the hour, and neither of the old
party platforms has a word or even a hint about it.
As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capital-
ists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they
are all capitalists and that the many small ones, like the fewer
large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and
this is always and everywhere the capitalist class.
Whether the means of production, that is to say, the land,
mines, factories, machinery, etc., are owned by a few large Re-
publican capitalists, who organize a trust, or whether they be
owned by a lot of small Democratic capitalists, who are opposed
to the trust, is all the same to the working class. Let the capi-
talists, large and small, fight this out among themselves.
The working class must get rid of the whole brood of mas-
ters and exploiters, and put themselves in possession and control
of the means of production, that they may have steady employ-
ment without consulting a capitalist employer, large or small,
and that they may get the wealth their labor produces, every bit
of it, and enjoy with their families the fruits of their industry
in comfortable and happy homes, abundant and wholesome
food, proper clothing and all other things necesary to "life, lib-
erty and the pursuit of happiness." It is therefore a question,
not of "reform," the mask of fraud, but of revolution. The cap-
italist system must be overthrown, class-rule abolished and wage-
slavery supplanted by co-operative industry.
We hear it frequently urged that the Democratic party is the
"poor man's party," "the friend of labor/' There is but one
way to relieve poverty and to free labor, and that is by making
common property of the tools of labor.
Is the Democratic party, which we are assured has "strong
socialistic tendencies," in favor of collective ownership of the
means of production? Is it opposed to the wage-system, from
which flows in a ceaseless stream the poverty, misery and
wretchedness of the children of toil? If the Democratic party
is the "friend of labor" any more than the Republican party,
why is its platform dumb in the presence of Coeur d'Alene? It
knows the truth about these shocking outrages — crimes upon
workingmen, their wives and children, which would blacken the
pages of Siberia — why does it not speak out?
What has the Democratic party to say about the "property
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131 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
and educational qualification" in North Carolina and Louisiana,
and the proposed general disfranchisement of the negro race in
the southern states?
The differences between the Republican and Democratic par-
ties involve no issue, no principle in which the working class
have any interest, and whether the spoils be distributed by
Hanna and Piatt, or by Croker and Tammany Hall is all the
same to them.
Between these parties socialists have no choice, no preference.
They are one in their opposition to socialism, that is to say, the
emancipation of the working class from wage-slavery, and every
workingman who has intelligence enough to understand the in-
terest of his class and the nature of the struggle in which it is
involved, will once and for all time sever his relations with them
both; and recognizing the class-struggle which is being waged
between producing workers and non-producing capitalists, cast
his lot with the class-conscious, revolutionary, socialist party,
which is pledged to abolish the capitalist system, class-rule and
wage-slavery — a party which does not compromise or fuse, but,
preserving inviolate the principles which quickened it into life
and now give it vitality and force, moves forward with dauntless
determination to the goal of economic freedom.
The political trend is steadily toward Socialism. The old par-
ties are held together only by the cohesive power of spoils, and
in spite of this they are steadily disintegrating. Again and again
they have been tried with the same results, and thousands upon
thousands, awake to their duplicity, are deserting them and turn-
ing toward socialism as the only refuge and security. Repub-
licans, Democrats, Populists, Prohibitionists, Single Taxers are
having their eyes opened to the true nature of the struggle and
they are beginning to
"Come as the winds come, when
Forests are rended;
Come as the waves come, when
Navies are stranded. "
For a time the Populist party had a mission, but it is practi-
cally ended. The Democratic party has "fused" it out of exist-
ence. The "middle of the road" element will be sorely disap-
pointed when the votes are counted, and they will probably never
figure in another National campaign. Not many of them will go
back to the old parties. Many of them have already come to
Socialism, and the rest are sure to follow.
There is no longer any room for a Populist party, and pro-
gressive populists realize it, and hence the "strongholds" of pop-
ulism are becoming the "hot-beds" of socialism.
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OUTLOOK FOR SOCIALISM IN UNITED STA TES 186
It is simply a question of capitalism or socialism, of despot-
ism or democracy, and they who are not wholly with us are wholly
against us.
Another source of strength to socialism, steadily increasing, is
the trades-union movement. The spread of socialist doctrine
among the labor organizations of the country during the past
year exceeds the most extravagant estimates. No one has had
better opportunities than the writer to note the transition to
socialism among trades-unionists, and the approaching election
will abundantly verify it.
Promising, indeed, is the outlook for socialism in the United
States. The very contemplation of the prospect is a well-spring
of inspiration.
Oh, that all the working class could and would use their eyes
and see; their ears and hear; their brains and think. How soon
this earth could be transformed and by the alchemy of social
order made to blossom with beauty and joy.
No sane man can be satisfied with the present system. If a
poor man is happy, said Victor Hugo, "he is the pick-pocket of
happiness. Only the rich and noble are happy by right. The
rich man is he who, being young, has the rights of old age; being
old, the lucky chances of youth; vicious, the respect of good
people; a coward, the command of the stout-hearted; doing
nothing, the fruits of labor." . . .
The great Frenchman also propounded this interrogatory
which every workingman will do well to contemplate: "Can
you fancy a city directed by the men who built it?"
With pride and joy we watch each advancing step of our com-
rades in socialism in all other lands. Our hearts are with them
in their varying fortunes as the battle proceeds, and we applaud
each telling blow delivered and cheer each victory achieved.
The wire has just brought the tidings of Liebknecht's death.
The hearts of American socialists will be touched and shocked
by the calamity. The brave old warrior succumbed at last, but
not until he heard the tramp of International Socialism, for
which he labored with all his loving, loyal heart; not until he
saw the thrones of Europe, one by one, begin to totter, not until
he had achieved" a glorious immortality.
Eugene V. Debs.
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COMPARISON OF THE DEMOCRATIC AND REPUB-
LICAN PLATFORMS.
The National platforms of both the Republican and Demo-
cratic parties are so wordy that a reproduction of them would
require more space than is herein available, and yet there is an
abundance of room for the consideration of all the points worthy
of notice.
When reference is made to these parties it will be understood
to include only the authors of the platforms and their associates
rather than the rank and file of the voters. It will be interesting
to note the compliments each party pays to the other; their vo-
ciferous professions of their own sincerity; the contradictions
contained in each platform; how the platforms conflict with the
acts of each party; their feigned love for the workingman; their
professed loyalty to the flag, to the Constitution and to the Dec-
laration of Independence; their "noble responsibility" (?) for the
Porto Rican, Cuban and Filipino; their hatred for corporate
"conspiracies and combinations," and their effort to keep the
producing class divided by riveting their attention to these su-
perficial declarations while the capitalist class holds the scepter
and reaps the harvest.
The Republican platform compliments the Democratic party
in the following language: "Under Democratic administration
business was dead, industry paralyzed, and the national credit
disastrously impaired"; "capital was hidden away, labor dis-
tressed and unemployed"; "the menace to prosperity has always
resided in Democratic principles and in the general incapacity of
the Democratic party to conduct public affairs"; "the Demo-
cratic party has never earned public confidence." Meanwhile the
Democratic platform compliments the Republican party as fol-
lows: "The Porto Rico law enacted by a Republican Congress
is a flagrant breach of the national good faith"; "the Republican
carpetbag officials plunder the revenues (of Cuba) and exploit
the colonial theory, to the disgrace of the American people";
"the declaration that the Republican party steadfastly adheres
to the policy announced in the Monroe doctrine is manifestly
insincere and deceptive"; "the Republican party supports the
trusts in return for campaign subscriptions and political sup-
port. ,, Thus the one is said to be incapable and the other dis-
honest; and who is there that would dare dispute such high au-
thority? Indeed, upon reflection one is inclined to be even more
liberal and to concede that what each party says is not only true
186
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DEMOCRA TIC AND REPUBLICAN PL A TFORMS 187
of the other, but is also applicable to themselves. The logic of
events has driven both parties from the issues of the last presi-
dential campaign; the tariff and the money question are buried,
and the respective planks in the platforms only serve as head-
boards to their graves.
The Democratic party has openly confessed that the issue of
1 6 to i, upon which only four short years ago the institutions of
this country were to eternally stand or fall, is now of minor im-
portance, and the question of imperialism has taken its place.
Thus the burial ceremonies were said; while the Republican
party insists that their legislation on money and tariff has been
followed by "prosperity more general and more abundant than
we have ever known." And this claim is made in the face of
the facts that a high "tariff" and a "gold standard" prevailed
under Cleveland at the time when the Republicans insist that
"Business was dead," "industry paralyzed," "credit impaired/'
"money hid away," "labor distressed," and also in the face of the
facts that they made no material change in the tariff and the
gold-standard laws, and the slight alteration in the currency law
was not made until the last session of Congress, after the "wave
of prosperity" had passed. Priding themselves upon the "wis-
dom of the gold-standard legislation of the Fifty-sixth Con-
gress/' passed after the boom was over, they proceed to bury
the tariff, with the following inscription upon the tombstone:
"We renew our faith in the policy of protection to American
labor," "whose constantly increasing knowledge and skill have
enabled them to finally enter the markets of the world." Thus
they paid tribute to the dead issue, for of what value is a tariff
if we are able to "enter the markets of the world"? But since
that is a fact, could protection have caused the boom of which
they boast? Surely this will need no argument. These issues
buried, they take their respective position upon the new issues
of imperialism, of the trust and of expansion, with a bait on the
side for labor. The Republican party, in its efforts to justify im-
perialism, declares that the "war was for liberty and human
rights," and that "ten millions of the human race were given a
new birth of freedom and the American people a new and noble
responsibility." If these men are free, are we responsible for
them? Is it really freedom or slavery into which they have been
born? The Republican party says the "largest measure of self-
government consistent with their welfare and our duties shall be
given them." What right have we to determine upon the meas-
ure of self-government consistent with their welfare? Was this
not precisely what England said of us when we were weak? Is
this not always the excuse of the powerful when they are un-
scrupulously forcing tribute from the weak? Thus our Consti-
tution and Declaration of Independence are trampled under foot,
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138 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
and taxation without representation becomes the policy of the
Republican party.
The Democratic party, being ever watchful for political ad-
vantage, perceives this flaw and promptly declares "that any
government not based upon the consent of the governed is a
tyranny ... and is a substitution of the methods of im-
perialism for those of a republic," "and that all governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the. governed." In-
deed! and did the Democratic party disfranchise the colored
people of North Carolina because "all governments derive their
just powers from the consent of the governed"?
The Democrats assert that "no nation can long endure half
republic and half empire." Can any state long so endure? Look
again at North Carolina. Again they warn us that "imperialism
abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home."
Has not despotism already followed imperialism in North Caro-
lina? Were the Democrats in power, would they be more just
to the colored Porto Rican than they are to the colored Caro-
linian? Is not Democratic imperialism and tyranny as hateful
in North Carolina as Republican tyranny and imperialism is in
Porto Rico and the Philippines?
The Republicans are doing in, Porto Rico and the Philippines
precisely what the Democrats are doing in North Carolina, and
there is no reason to suppose that either would change their
conduct if they were to exchange their places. Give them power,
and they will both be imperialists. The Democratic platform
declares that "the burning issue of imperialism grew out of the
Spanish war," and yet they declare that "Trusts are the most
efficient means yet devised for appropriating the fruits of industry
to the benefit of the few, at the expense of the many, and unless
their insatiate greed is checked all wealth will be aggregated in
a few hands and the republic destroyed." Is not this imperial-
ism? Does not imperialism reign in all our industries? Did it
grow out of this Spanish war? Can a nation long exist half
republic and half empire? Can imperialism continue in our in-
dustries and democracy in our politics?
The Democratic platform says that "Private monopolies are
indefensible and intolerable. They destroy competition, control
the price of all material, and of the unfinished product, thus rob-
bine both producer and consumer." While the Republican plat-
form "Condemns all conspiracies and combinations intended to
restrict business, to create monopolies, to limit production, or to
control prices, and favors such legislation as will effectually re-
strain and prevent all such abuses."
Since they are both agreed upon this proposition, and since
they are the only parties represented in Congress, it is pertinent
to ask why they did not do something toward carrying out their
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DEMOCRA TIC AND REPUBLICAN PL A TFORMS 139
professions? Each blames the others, and again they are both
right, for they are both at fault. The proof is to be found in the
fact that they are agreed upon two still more fundamental prop-
ositions, from which the other issues arise. They indorse the
wages system, and uphold the rights of capital. The Republican
platform says, first: "We renew our faith in the policy of pro-
tection to American labor," by which "the wages in every de-
partment of labor has been maintained at high rates." Second:
"We recognize the necessity and propriety of the honest co-op-
eration of capital to meet new business conditions."
The Democratic platform says, first: "We favor arbitration
as a means of settling disputes between corporations and their
employes." Second: "Corporations should be protected in all
their rights and legitimate interests."
Upon these two propositions they are certainly agreed. But
the wages system means that one man employs another for a
part of his product and keeps the rest. It also means that the
employer will keep more of the worker's product than is sufficient
to live upon; otherwise he would do as well to work for a wage.
But since the workers produce more than enough to pay them-
selves and to keep their employers, where is there to be found a
market for the rest? Evidently there will be no home market
for such products. That which - is left over will first become
capital. The aggregation of this capital will grow into corpora-
tions with their alleged "legitimate interests." The aggregation
of these corporations means trusts. In proportion as the num-
ber of trusts increases the number of employers decreases. As
the machinery of production is improved in its efficiency, so also
can fewer men perform the task and at the same time live on a
smaller proportion of their increased product. Thus is the sur-
plus for which there is no market constantly and necessarily in-
creased.
It is for this reason that the Republican platform says that
"new markets are necessary for the increasing surplus of our
products," and the Democratic platform says "we favor trade
expansion."
It was this surplus that caused our war with Spain, under the
pretext of freeing the suffering Cuban. Yet the Republican party
claim that the war was "unsought and patiently resisted." It is
also this surplus which is causing the war with China, under the
pretext of saving the missionaries and legations. The Repub-
lican platform says that "Every effort should be made to open
and obtain new markets, especially in the Orient." And those
markets or people which are conquered will be given that "meas-
ure of self-government consistent with their welfare and our du-
ties." And thus is political imperialism becoming established
as a result of our industrial imperialism, and taxation without
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140 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
representation is the ruling policy. But it is to be expected that
this will be the political policy when every industrial establish-
ment in our country is a little empire, with an employer as abso-
lute monarch, "protected in his legitimate interests, ,, and where
the workers are his subjects. Nor should we be surprised at the
policy of taxation without representation in the colonies, for this
is our custom in our industries.
Have the workingmen any voice in the management of the
industry in which they are employed In this respect their voice
is as silent as the tomb. Is it not their labor that produces the
products, the profit, the capital, the surplus which is kept from
them? Is this not taxation without representation?
The reason why neither the Democratic or Republican parties
ever propose to abolish this wages system, this system of taxa-
tion without representation, is because those who frame the plat-
forms are the representatives of the capitalist class who do the
taxing. The power derived from taxation is to them sweeter
than justice. They blindfold the working class by referring to
the little business flurry just past as a wonderfully prosperous pe-
riod, but they never mention the fact that the government wasted
about 1,000,000,000 of dollars in prosecuting the war and the
boom only lasted while we were spending it. It was only an
opiate which stimulates for a moment, but leaves a wreck of its
victim.
Instead of reminding us that they have thrown away
1,000,000.000 of dollars, which the working class must pay, with
interest; instead of reminding us of the fact that expansion is
only an extension of the American capitalists' power of taxation
without representation; instead of telling us in so many words
that they love the workingman for what they can get out of him;
they "renew their faith in protection of the worker," while they
renew their gatling guns in protection of the "legitimate (?) in-
terests of the corporations" — that is, of themselves. The injunc-
tion sets the law in operation, and the standing army is sent to
the Coeur d'Alenes, the state militia to Croton dam, the United
States marshals to St. Louis and Hazelton. The capitalist class, •
with the machinery of government, protects their interests
against the working class, who produced the capital. The Dem-
ocratic platform condemns government by injunction and de-
clares for government by arbitration. Were arbitration made
binding by law, there is no reason to believe that the arbitrators
would show any more interest in behalf of the working class than
do the present injunction judges. In such case the arbitrators
would set the law in motion, the terms would be binding, and
the capitalist class, being in possession of the powers of govern-
ment, would enforce these terms at the point of the bayonet, and
the last vestige of the workingman's liberty would be gone.
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DEMOCRA TIC AND REPUBLICAN PL A TFORMS 141
Both protection and arbitration are but baits on the capitalist's
hook to catch the worker's vote.
It is apparent that the live issues of this campaign have been
forced to the front by our industrial development. Starting
with the wages system, the first result is a surplus which devel-
ops the autocratic employer on the one hand and the workman
as his subject on the other. As the surplus increases the em-
ployer develops into a capitalist, then into a corporation "with-
out a soul," but with "legitimate (?) interests," while the work-
man remains a subject with no voice in the management of af-
fairs. When the surplus grows still larger it represents more
power with which the trust is organized and the prices to some
degree controlled, with the working class still in subjection.
As the trust becomes more powerful the surplus seeks foreign
markets and the workers in foreign lands who are being fleeced
are considered even less capable of acting intelligently than are
the American workers, and thus political imperialism abroad is
added to industrial imperialism at home. Instead of compulsory
education, with state support, both the Republican and Demo-
cratic parties favor educational qualification, and in some states
agitation is being made for property qualification. As the sur-
plus product increases beyond the market, men are thrown out
of work. As men are discharged, competition for positions be-
gins among the workers and wages go down; as wages go down
the worker is less able to own property or to school his children,
and thus a process of disfranchising the working class begins,
imperialism rears its head from the industrial into political af-
fairs, and taxation without representation becomes the political
as well as the industrial policy of our country. The capitalist
will diligently support the wages system and loudly declare that
capital, though the product of labor, has "legitimate interests"
antagonistic to labor, because it is by this process that they gain
their power. They will multiply the issues and magnify their
importance in their mad greed for power. A vote for either the
Democratic or the Republican parties is a vote for the trust, for
expansion, and for imperialism, because these issues are the
logical and inevitable result of the wages system, which they
both support. Not until the working class organize a political
party, managed by and for the interests of their class, and
through the instrumentality of that party, conquer the powers
of government, and reorganize the industrial institutions, to the
end that each producer shall have an equal voice in the manage-
ment thereof, and that all productive capital shall be owned in
common and that the wages system shall be abolished, and that
each worker shall receive an equivalent for his total product,
will the problems of imperialism, taxation without representa-
tion, expansion* trusts, corporate greed, and labor wars, be set-
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142 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
tied, and the two now warring classes be united into one frater-
nal bond of fellowship, making war upon nature for her fruits
instead of upon each other.
This devolves upon the working class. It is to their interest.
They have the votes, the power and the intelligence, and it de-
pends upon the concerted action of the Socialists to deliver to
them the necessary information as to its exercise.
Job Harriman.
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THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECT OF THE
TRUST QUESTION.
The trust question has become prominent in the last few
years, owing to the rapid organization of industry. Probably
no natural movement ever brought out such widespread protests
as this tendency of capitalistic combination. So important has
the question become that the great political parties could not
ignore the issue. Naturally the position taken by the three re-
spective parties, on the trust quesion, reflects the material inter-
ests of the classes they serve.
The Republican party represents the interests of the large
capitalistic class — the plutocracy. It declares in its platform:
"We recognize the necessity and propriety of honest co-opera-
tion of capital, . . . but we condemn all conspiracies and com-
binations intended to restrict business or control prices." This
declaration is somewhat ambiguous. It does not inform us what
is meant by "honest co-operation of capital" or what combina-
tions are considered conspiracies. Some one has suggested that
only such combinations are conspiracies as refuse to contribute
liberally to the Republican campaign fund. If this is the right
inference, then all must have contributed in 1896, for the admin-
istration has not condemned any of the combinations.
Of course the declaration is a mere subterfuge. It is well
known to-day that the Republican party represents the interests
of the trust magnates, but there has been such a hue and cry
raised against the trusts that the party did not dare to openly
defend these combinations without a pretense of antagonism.
Consequently it inserted a cleverly drawn "plank" that can be
interpreted according to circumstances. It is evident that the
administration does not consider any of the existing combina-
tions "conspiracies," for the Republicans have been in full con-
trol of all branches of the National administration, and have
failed to enact any legislation designed to curtail concentration
or even to enforce the anti-trust laws already in existence. In
face of the fact that more trusts have been formed during the
McKinley administration than during all the preceding adminis-
trations combined, their pretense of opposition to any kind of
combination is ludicrous. Should the Republicans again be suc-
cessful they would undoubtedly gain courage and throw off the
mask and come out openly for the trust policy. There are many
143
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144 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
indications that such would be the course pursued — individuals
and papers, here and there, even now openly champion the cause
of concentrated capital. Of course, they would rely, as in the
past, upon deceiving the working class as to its interests. Were
it not for this wholesale deception, the present system could not
long be maintained.
The Democratic party represents the interests of the middle
class — the class of small capitalists, small producers and traders.
Its platform declares that "Private monopolies are indefensible
and intolerable. They destroy competition, control the price of
all material and of the finished product, thus robbing both pro-
ducers and consumers. . . . We pledge the Democratic party
to an unceasing warfare in nation, state, and city against- pri-
vate monoply in every form."
The Democratic party thus pledges itself to an unceasing
warfare against private monopoly, but it fails to point out just
where the monopoly exists. It relies upon the popular prejudice
against so-called trusts to identify all such combinations with
private monopoly! But as a matter of fact there are no abso-
lute monopolies in the industrial field. The'Standard Oil Com-
pany comes the nearest to being an industrial monopoly, yet
there are some 25 or 30 independent companies, 15 of which
have a capital of from $100,000 to $1,000,000. In the paper
combine some 75 per cent or 80 per cent of the productive ca-
pacity of the country is represented, but there is vigorous com-
petition outside. The same is true of other industries where
organization has been effected— no line of industry has yet been
completely centralized under one management. Of course there
are businesses such as railroads, trolley companies, electric and
gas supplies, etc., that are absolute monopolies. As the Demo-
cratic party does not declare for public ownership of these
monopolies but merely for war on them, are we to understand
that they desire to destroy all such monopolies and return to
the old-fashioned stage coach and tallow dip? Surely they must
know that competition in these fields is impossible, and yet
these are the only fields where absolute private monopoly exists
and so the only businesses upon which they really declare war.
But this, however, is not the intention, for the party represents
the interests of the middle class and so is opposed to all large
concentrated capital, for it is this concentration that is eliminat-
ing the small producers in every field.
But the question naturally arises, Does the Democratic party
desire to suppress all organization of industry? Evidently not,
for the platform declares that "corporations should be pro-
tected in their rights and their legitimate interests should be
respected." If corporations, then, are to be protected, is there
any distinction to be made between large and small corpora-
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THE TRUST QUESTION 145
tions? If so, where is the line to be drawn? The principle of
organization is the same in both instances, the only difference
is in the size of their capital. Will they draw the line at a
hundred millions, at fifty millions, ten millions, one million, five
hundred thousand, one hundred thousand, fifty, ten, or one thou-
sand? If a hundred millions capital aggregated into one con-
cern is dangerous, why not fifty millions, and if fifty millions,
why not one, and so on all the way down? Where is the line
to be drawn? Would it not be well for those who oppose eco-
nomic progress and organization of industry to point out the
economic principle of discrimination?
Is it said that no distinction is to be made between large and
small corporations but between the corporation and trust form
of organization? But the difference between the trust and cor-
poration is not economic but legal. There never were but few
bona fide trusts and these have now — I believe without an ex-
ception — been dissolved, in order to escape adverse legislation,
and converted into large corporations. The so-called trusts,
being but large corporations, makes the question of drawing the
line of great importance. The crusade aerainst so-called trusts,
then, is merely a crusade against large corporations, and the
Democratic party ought not to expect the people to support any
such movement unless they know just what is to be done. Let
no one be deceived; the cry "Down with trusts" is a crusade
against the concentration of capital.
The question then is this: Is the modern tendency toward
greater and greater organization and centralization in industry
economic, efficient, and in accord with industrial progress, and
is the outcome destined to prove beneficial to society as a whole?
It must be evident that the principle of combination, the concen-
tration of capital,- is economic and efficient, else it would be
discarded. In fact, the principle was adopted as the result of a
series of experiments which taught the capitalists the efficiency
of capital in large masses. They found out that large capital
could be used more advantageously than small capital — it could
produce more economically and efficiently. As such experiments
proved successful they were extended. Every million added to
the plant increased the efficiencv of both the old capital and the
new, and so gradually industry was transformed. That this ten-
dency of concentration is in accord with industrial progress is
evident from the fact that the whole history of industrial prog-
ress is the history of economic evolution — the organization arid
centralization of industry. Without this centralization produc-
tive efficiency could not have progressed beyond the status of
small individual concerns. The difference between the economic
status of the individual capitalist, the corporation and the so-
called trusts, is not one of principle but of size and complexity
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146 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
of industrial organization. The corporation, with its greater
concentration of capital, is able to organize industry on a more
complex basis and on a larger scale than the individual capitalist,
and for the same reason the trust is able to more completely
organize industry than the corporation. While the corporation
consists in the association of a number of capitalists, the trust
proper is the association of corporations, the only difference
being that one represents a greater aggregation and centraliza-
tion of capital than the other. The organization of industry has
proceeded just in proportion as capital has been concentrated,
and economy in production depends upon organization — the
more perfect the organization, the greater the economy. The
individual capitalist is not able to organize industry on a very
complex basis, but the corporation with its larger capital can
more completely organize industry and specialize labor, while the
trust with its still larger capital can effect a more prefect organi-
zation and better utilization of productive energy.
Here, note, that each step in the industrial evolution has been
taken because conditions demanded it. The growth in mechan-
ical inventions, the large amount of capital necessitated to uti-
lize profitably the new methods, made it impossible for the indi-
vidual capitalist to furnish the requisite means, so the corporation
arose. Still further progress in mechanical improvements and
the evolution in industrial methods made a greater aggregation
of capital necessary, so the trusts came into existence — a step
further along the line of industrial progress.
The history of economic progress, then, has been the history
of the concentration of productive capital. That this concentra-
tion is necessary to the utilization of the best methods in modern
industry is evident. To reverse this tendency and decentralize
capital is to barbarize society. The Democratic middle class
policy, then, is reactionary — it would destroy economic progress.
The character of the anti-trust movement is analogous to the
anti-machinery movement of a century ago, when the hand loom
weavers marched throughout England and destroyed the power
looms. Hargreaves, Arkright, and Crompton were driven from
their homes by howling mobs, for inventing the new methods
that displaced the old. The cry of "Down with machinery" has
been supplanted by "Down with trusts." The whole history of
industrial progress is the history of resistance to new methods
the new inventions. It is not strange, then, that the phenomenal
industrial development of the last few years should meet with
vigorous opposition. But the movement toward greater organi-
zation of industry is natural and consequently inevitable. The
aggregation of capital is indispensable to modern progress. In
ihose countries and in those industries where the greatest con-
centration has taken place, there you will find the greatest prog-
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THE TRUST QUESTION 147
ress. The great productive economies are confined to the indus-
tries where capital is most employed.
The result of this greater organization of industry, and conse-
quent economy of production, has been to drive the smaller and
inferior competitors from the field. It is because the middle
class, with its effete machinery and methods, are unable to com-
pete with the improved appliances of the larger corporations,
that they wish to destroy these large corporations or trusts and
force civilization back into the competitive stage of industry out
of which we are evolving. But their efforts in this direction
will be futile, as were those of their predecessors who endeavored
to force a return to the handicraft stage of production. Both
movements are in opposition to progress and so foredoomed to
failure. The so-called trust is a natural product of the industrial
evolution and has come to stay.
Of course, the middle class complain that this reorganization
means their displacement. This is true but it cannot be helped,
for those who best serve the community are entitled to the com-
munity's support, otherwise there would be no progress. Had
the opposite policy prevailed we would still be employing the
stage coach, and the hand flail, etc. The improved methods have
been advantageous, else they would not have supplanted the old.
The general fall in prices which has taken place in the last fifty
years has been greatest in those industries where concentration
has been greatest. Society, then, is not interested in sustaining
small capitalists as producers and distributers. If they must be
sustained fey society, it would be more profitable to pension them
than to pay the high prices resulting from the inferior methods
necessitated by their small capital. Remember, when a small
industry is driven from the field by a larger one it is because
the latter does its work cheaper and better.
The middle class reads its doom in this concentration of cap-
ital. Of the 14,000 failures, annually, 87 per cent are those whose
capital is $5,000 or less. Is it any wonder, then, that this class
should protest against the concentration of capital? Its frantic
cry "Down with trusts" is merely the cry of its class interests.
Its protest is not in behalf of the laboring class, — not a protest
against the exploiting system of production, — but merely against
the new capitalism becoming sole exploiter. The middle class
does not object to some riding on the backs of others, but it
wants to do the riding.
Let no laborer be deceived by this outcry against concentrated
capital. It does not mean a betterment of labor conditions but
rather the reverse. The tools of production to-day are social
in character and can only be operated by co-operative labor.
This fact precludes the possibility of the laborers as individuals
ever owning the tools necessary to their toil. To destroy these
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148 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
great combinations of capital would only mean the return to
inferior methods of production — such methods and tools as
could be owned by smaller organizations of capitalists. But the
instruments of smaller corporations and even those furnished
by the individual capitalist are social in character, consequently,
— unless we return to the days of hand labor, — the workers would
still be absolutely dependent, as to-day, upon the owning class.
The only difference would be that under the decentralized pro-
gramme the number of labor exploiters would be larger, but this
would be of no benefit to the laboring class. Laborers are not
benefited by increasing the number of their fleecers.
The plea of the middle class for its retention is futile. The
laboring class is not interested in its preservation with its absurd
principle of industrial competition. That competition is injurious
is evident from the fact that it has been well nigh supplanted
by the principle of combination. Surely no one with economic
sense wishes to return to the era of competitive supremacy. A
more wasteful and absurd system could not be devised — a sys-
tem which takes several dozen firms to do the work of one. To
be sure we sympathize with those displaced, but the displace-
ment is inevitable — the necessary result of economic evolution.
They are sacrificed for the perfecting of society. There awaits
them however, an ample compensation, if they are wise enough
to accept it, which we wijl consider presently.
The Socialist party represents the interests of the proletariat
class — the class of wage and salary workers; It represents their
interests because their class interests are in accord with social
progress. The class interests of both the proprietary classes
depend upon maintaining present conditions, but not so with the
working class. While Socialism represents the class interests
of the laborers, it also represents the true interests of every mem-
ber of society. It does not represent the class interests of either
division of the proprietary class, for their class interests signify
such policies as make for the perpetuity of their class. Socialism
would abolish all classes — a step necessary to realize a true civ-
ilization. But as the class interests of the laborers are in accord
with economic progress, we call upon them to unite for their
own emancipation, which would also mean the salvation of
society, for they cannot save themselves without abolishing the
cause of all economic servitude and oppression — the private and
corporate ownership of the instruments of production and distri-
bution. While Socialism represents the personal interests of all,
— for it means a higher and truer civilization, — the members of
the proprietary class are so blinded by their prejudice and class
interests that they are unable to see what would make for a
nobler manhood and a higher order of society. We cannot hope,
then, that the capitalist class, as ar class, will join the forward
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THE TRUST QUESTION 149
movement, but individual members of the class will join, and are
joining by the thousands, especially, from the perishing middle
class.
Socialism is in the line of progress and certain of attainment.
The Socialist party points out that the tendency to concentration
is natural and inevitable, and that the gradual development of
competing industries into trusts is destined to realize the ideal
for which they labor — the Co-operative Commonwealth. One
who understands the causes which have led to the substitution
of combination for competition well knows the impossibility of
ever returning to the latter. Associated capital and machinery
are necessary to effective and economical production. The pass^
ing of industry from the hand to the mechanical basis, meant the
death of the old competitive order. A return to the days of free
competition and small things would constitute a reversal of all
progress. To restore this era it would be necessary to destroy
all modern machinery, all new and improved methods, all large
factories and stores, and punish all progressiveness with instant
death. We cannot return to the past — in economic evolution
there is no retrogression. The whole history of industrial devel-
opment evidences the tendency in progressive society toward a
greater centralization of capital and organization of industry,
which the most highly developed machinery and improved meth-
ods of production make necessary. Without this concentration
industries could not have utilized the most improved methods;
in fact, very few such industries could now be conducted on
less than a million dollars capital, and many require tens and
hundreds of millions. Shall we destroy this concentration and
thus make impossible the use of the most effective methods in
modern industry? Such a proposition is absurd, and yet this
is the policy of the Democratic, middle class, party. Central-
ized capital is the most effective tool in production ; to decentral-
ize it would be to destroy this effective instrument.
Of course, the concentration of capital into the hands of a few
enable these few to reap the benefits of economic progress, but
there must be some way by which the improved methods can
be retained and the benefits reaped by all the people. Socialism
solves the problem. It points out that organized capital — the
results of economic progress — can be preserved, and the benefits
of this organization accrue to society as a whole. If the people
wish to enjoy the benefits of these great combinations, the
trusts, they must own them. As long as they remain private
property, the few will reap the advantage. Public ownership is
the key to the solution of the problem — the only rational solution
of the vexed trust question. The principle of combination is
sound and ought to be extended to the whole social order. As
production and distribution on a large scale are more economic
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160 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
they ought to survive, but the only safety to society is in the
adoption of the principle by the collectivity. When these large
corporations or trusts, which embody the principle of combina-
tion, are socialized, then the evils which arise from private own-
ership will disappear, leaving only the benefits that result from
co-operation.
The Socialist solution of this problem is in accord with eco-
nomic progress. We have seen how individuals combine into
corporations and corporations into trusts, and we ask that the
next logical step be taken and trusts combine into a great
trust — the Nation. It is only in universal combination that a
complete consummation of the economic evolution can be at-
tained.
Shall this consummation be effected?
The Republican party, representing the interests of the plu-
tocracy — the trust owners — says no. They admit the inevitable-
ness of the concentration of industry and its advantages of in-
creased production and economy, but as they reap the benefits,
by virtue of their ownership, they are opposed to further prog-
ress. They would forcibly check the evolutionary process and
prevent its consummation for the sake of private gain. They
enjoy the benefits of Socialism in production — utilizing the
Socialist principles of combination, co-operation and unification
— but they are opposed to Socialism in distribution. What we
want is Socialism in both production and distribution that the
benefits of industrial evolution, now monopolized by a few, may
become the inheritance of all. The large capitalists, then, in
advocating the private ownership of concentrated industry, are
merely championing their class interests.
The Democratic party, representing the interests of the mid-
dle class, also says no. As the large capitalists see only good in
concentration, the middle class sees only evil. It completely
overlooks the great power and economy effected by unified in-
dustry, and perceives nothing but the bitterness and failures that
have attended its growth. As this organization means their
downfall, they naturally revolt. While their opposition to indus-
trial progress is due to their class interests — the middle class
being hopelessly doomed in competition with large industries —
their opposition to the consummation of the industrial evolution
is due to their ignorance. If they realized the hopelessness of
their struggle and the certain bankruptcy of their whole class,
they would join the party of progress and aid in bringing in the
new order. Socialism is their only hope — here only can they find
compensation. But, like the slaveholders of old, they are blinded
by their prejudice, and so think that their interests lie on the
other side. The whole policy of this class is reactionary and
tends to destroy progress and civilization.
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THE TRUST QUESTION 151
The Socialist party, representing primarially the interests of
the proletariat class, but in reality the true interests of every
member of society — not their class interests, as we have seen,
but their interests as human beings — says yes. The Socialist
party is thus the only party of progress. It points out the good
and evil of concentration and shows how the good can be re-
tained and the evil eliminated. We regret the Democratic mid-
dle class reactionary policy of "trust smashing," also the Repub-
lican plutocratic policy of "private ownership." We cannot
return to the days of competition and small things, while to
maintain private property in modern tools of production is to
block the wheels of progress. The only salvation is in pushing
the evolution on to its logical consummation — public or col-
lective ownership of all the means of production and distribu-
tion. It is only thus that the outcome of economic evolution will
prove beneficial to society as a whole.
The question is often discussed as to the immediate effect
of these great combinations on society. Some claim that they
are necessarily injurious, while others contend that they are
beneficial. Undoubtedly there are instances of both results.
Some combinations have shared with the community, to a lim-
ited extent, the economies which resulted from the better organ-
ization and improved methods, while others have forced prices
up and "gouged" the public to pay dividends on abnormal cap-
italization. The latter is the usual method, and even those indus-
tries that have, as a whole, lowered prices, make use of the
periods of industrial activity to arbitrarily raise prices and reap
enormous profits. The Standard Oil Company, the American
Sugar Refining Company, the Cotton Seed Oil Trust, the West-
ern Union Telegraph Company, and the great railroad systems,
have shared with society, although sparingly, the economies re-
sulting from their improved methods, but, as already pointed
out, some of them are unable to resist the universal impulse to
make larger profits and so take advantage of improved indus-
trial conditions to advance prices and fleece the public more
than usual. Almost all industries recently organized have fol-
lowed this speculative, monopolistic method. It is the piracy
of these combinations, with their "corners'' and "trade agree-
ments," etc., that has rightly aroused popular indignation. This
selfish greed does not militate against the principle of combina-
tion — the economy and efficiency of the principle is beyond con-
troversy — but it clearly shows the danger of leaving the princi-
ple in private or corporate control. Neither does the fact that
certain combinations have shared any portion of the gain with
society, justify private or corporate ownership. For even where
this is said to have occurred, prices have been arbitrarily ad-
vanced and the public robbed of millions. But it is sometimes
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152 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
argued that even with the increased price the community gains
over the old competitive method — prices not arising to the for-
mer level for fear of inviting competition — but if this be true it
only shows, at the most, the benefit of trust production over
competition — it does not touch the question of public owner-
ship.
It must be evident to all that as long as these combinations
remain in private hands only a fraction of the benefit of im-
proved methods will ever accrue to the community. Thus while
the Standard Oil Company has greatly reduced the price of oil,
it has not reduced its profits one cent, but just the reverse. In
fact, the reduction in price was only for the purpose of increas-
ing consumption and so adding to the profits. The fact that
the Standard Oil Company is reported to have made $100,000,-
000 last year, and the American Sugar Refining Company is now
said to be making $72,000 a day, shows that in these industries
the community does not reap the full benefits of the improved
methods. It is only by public ownership that the full benefits
of modern machinery and methods can be reaped by all the
people. In every instance where the combinations have reduced
prices, the reduction has not been anywhere near in proportion
to the decreased cost of production. To hope that capitalists will
ever voluntarily share their gain with the public by relinquishing
any part of their fleecings is truly Utopian. Whenever prices are
voluntarily lowered, whether by an individual or corporation, it
is not for the sake of the public, but for the sake of larger profits.
The power of capital is too great to be trusted in the hands of
individuals and this power is ever increasing with the concentra-
tion of capital. There are apologists of the present order who
pretend to see no danger in this condition of things. They tell
us that the economic rulers would never take advantage of the
people, but experience does not bear out this contention. They
philosophize that the "masters" would not put up prices abnorm-
ally high for fear of inviting competition. There may have been
instances in the past when this fear might have had a salutary ef-
fect, but it has evidently lost its terror, judging from the tremen-
dous rise of prices that has taken place in the last few years. Ev-
ery line of industry has vied with each other to see which could
excel in fleecing the public. This fear of inviting competition by
raising prices is removed as industrial organization is perfected.
When a great industry is once established its laborers organized
and markets developed, it can bid defiance to competitors. A
new firm cannot well invade the field in opposition to the great
combination, for it cannot organize its laborers, its foremen, over-
seers, superintendents, etc., and correlate all the vast mechanical
appliances and catch up with the combination already organized
which can continually improve its organization and plant and so
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THE TRUST QUESTION 168
be able to control the market. Besides, the abnormal rise of
prices is not permanent; they are forced up for a time and mil-
lions additional profits secured, and then before new capital could
invade the field, prices are reduced.
While there are probably no absolute industrial monopolies as
yet, still it is not necessary for a combination to own every pro-
ductive plant in order to control the market. The Standard Oil
Company absolutely and arbitrarily controls the oil market, al-
though there are independent producers. The reason the Stand-
ard Oil Company can control the market is that the independent
producers are unable to supply the demand. As the product of
the Standard Company is necessary to meet the demand — the
product of the independent refineries being comparatively insig-
nificant — it can fix the price. The Standard Company being thus
able to control the market has not seen fit to crush out all the in-
dependent producers, which no one doubts its ability to do if it
so desired. The few that exist have been able to hold on only
because they are favorably situated. They have been allowed to
continue, probably because they are harmless and because the
company does not wish to stir up new opposition — it has had its
hands full warding off adverse legislation* As soon as a com-
bination is formed controlling the larger portion of the output,
although not an absolute monopoly, strictly speaking — more or
less plants being outside the combine — still it is a practical mo-
nopoly for it can fix prices, raise and lower them, at will.
The outcome of this movement of concentration, however, will
be absolute monopoly. As competition ends in combination, so
combination ends in complete monopoly. That all competition
will be finally eliminated is evident from the fact that capital is
concentrating into the hands of a few. In the modern joint-stock
form of ownership the great capitalists become interested in
various industries and so will not invest their surplus capital in
competing enterprises. John D. Rockefeller, for example, has
capital invested in various and diversified industries and he is
associated in these with many other capitalists, all of which have
a common interest. Is it to be supposed that these men will
put capital into other plants of the same kind and thus compete
against themselves? Thus when capital and industry are con-
centrated into the hands of a few, all being mutually interested
in the same productive enterprises, competition will be rendered
impossible. It will then make no difference how high prices are
raised or how the permanent large profits might be attractive to
new capital, there will be no surplus capital outside of those who
own the industries to invest in competitive enterprises. The
great economic masters can then rule with a hand of iron, con-
trolling product, prices, and people to suit their own sweet
will.
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154 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
There is but one escape from this conditon and from the servi-
tude already forced upon the working class. The socialization
of the trusts and a democratic administration of industry for the
benefit of all the people is the only solution of the problem.
Socialism would secure to all the people, instead of the few, the
benefits of the scientific organization of industry.
Charles H. Vail.
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
WILHELM LIEBKNECHT.
The first impression of Liebknecht was always a strong one,
in spite of the fact that it allowed of no analysis. There was a
realization of his dignity and presence though he was not a tall
man; there was a perception at once of his intensity though his
manner was calm and his conversation quiet. The first time I
saw him he was standing at his desk in the office of the "Vor-
waerts." The room itself was in some confusion of books and
papers, and Liebknecht's high desk was covered with them; but
after he turned to greet the two Socialists from Chicago — who
came unannounced, without letter of introduction — no more
thought was given to the surroundings. He appeared to be a
man of sixty-five — in reality he was seventy-three. His iron-
grey hair and beard did not conceal the strong lines of his face
which showed a life of struggle. His features were large and
somewhat roughly cut, but they were as firm as the thought be-
hind them; his eyes were keen and clear. But, more than all
else, there was a simplicity of manner which belongs only to
those who have lived in the lives of other men, without compro-
mise and without fear.
He went down to the book-room to get a catalogue and he
passed through the office where twenty or thirty persons were
waiting to see the advocate employed by the "Vorwaerts." They
all bowed to Liebknecht with the peculiar deference which is
given only to those whose work has brought them into the hearts
of the oppressed. He went through the room quickly, for he
avoided always the slightest possible acknowledgment of his
position.
And that, perhaps, explains the love he bore to an undisturbed
outdoor life. Every day when the weather permitted he and
Frau Leibknecht went to Grunewald, a great pine forest just out-
side Berlin, and spent several hours in walking or reading in one
of the gardens. It was there that he usually read the Socialist
journals from other lands, and no conversation about him ever
disturbed his perusal of foreign news. One morning I saw him
take out of his pocket papers from France, Belgium, Italy, Den-
mark, and England — and he read one after the other with perfect
ease. In a letter written the twenty-fourth of July he said, "Un-
til the beginning of last week, when the heat set in, we had cool
and wet weather, so that it was impossible to go often to the
Grunewald." And then he wrote of his extra work because of
the number of vacations being taken by the staff of the "Vor-
156
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156 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
waerts"; so that it seems as if his death might be traced to over-
work and the break in his regular exercise. He was stricken
with paralysis on August seventh; overcome by the burdens he
had taken upon his own shoulders, after living through the per-
secutions and dangers of a monarchy, in the midst of which he
had spent his life as an avowed Republican.
Liebknechfs life was coincident with the German conflict from
1848 to the year of his death. He was born at Giessen, in Hesse,
and spent his boyhood in an atmosphere of books and culture; —
his grandfather had been rector of the University of Giessen and
it was there that Liebknecht first began to study in his rather
unruly fashion, devoting much time to the things he liked, and
refusing to drudge over the things he disliked. Later, he studied
at the Universities of Marburg and Berlin, and among the books
he read were the works of St. Simon. He was roused to such a
pitch of enthusiasm that he decided to start for the land of
democracy — for America.
But a Swiss teacher met him on his way to Hamburg and per-
suaded him to wait and watch the approaching crisis in European
. politics. Liebknecht had burnt his bridges behind him before
starting out by announcing to his family his dissatisfaction with
the existing conditions and his interest in the new school of
French economists. And he found himself obliged to study for
the law as a means of livelihood when he had crossed the border.
Here in Zurich he came for the first time in contact with the
workingmen and those who were antagonistic to the traditional
governments. He learned that as early as 1833 there had been
an uprising in Frankfort on the part of those who wished politi-
cal equality, and he learned that the suppression of that uprising
had sent these men across the border who had had the courage
in their exile to publish a paper called the "Proscribed," and to
send it back to their fellows in Frankfort.
In this same year Marx and Engels — who had met in Paris
three years before — converted the League of the Just into the
Communist League and published the Communist Manifesto
which marks the first epoch of Socialism and expressed the prin-
ciples which have since served to unite workingmen of warring
nations. Liebknecht's enthusiasm had grown with his knowl-
edge of the struggle for liberty; and he set out for Paris in 1848
ready to carry a musket with his French comrades. He was
too late to fight, but he stayed in to study the methods of the
Communists, and only left when he heard that the young poet
Herwegh was about to strike a blow for liberty in his own
country.
Then he hurried across the frontier, only to cross it again after
a few weeks of futile marches and repeated calls to arms. Lieb-
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WILHELM LIEBKNECHT 157
knecht, as one of the most active "rebels" had naturally to seek
Switzerland, but he soon returned to Baden where the ferment
of discontent had been more constant. Struve was the leader,
and with a disaffected army, which had found the king's rule
unsupportable, he might have been successful in establishing a
republic, had he not been a procrastinator. Liebknecht himself
was most active and showed the executive ability which has al-
ways made his work effective. However, after a season of hope-
ful progress, there was strife among the revolutionists, and the
government was enabled to suppress the young Republic. Lieb-
knecht was arrested and kept in parole nine months which time
he devoted to preparing a defense of himself as a Revolutionist
and to courting his wife.
Much to his chagrin he was judged "not guilty" and had no
opportunity of making a maiden speech in Baden and yet his
popularity which had obtained his acquittal could not procure
his safety if he remained longer and once again he set out for
Switzerland.
In Geneva he undertook the education of workingmen's
groups in the principles and concepts of Socialism, and he ac-
complished enough to rouse the fears of both Prussia and Austria
who demanded, in 1850, that the authorities of Geneva expel him
from their city. Then began the most severe time of trial for
Liebknecht. He went to London, without any outlook in the
way of a living. He refused the financial help of Marx and
Engels, both of whom became greatly interested in him and were
well able to aid him. He tramped miles to secure pupils in Ger-
man, and there were times when he felt actual hunger; worst
of all, his wife and child were called upon to suffer with him,
and they could not know the zest of the battle in which the young
German felt himself.
At last he became the London correspondent for the "Augs-
burger Allgemeine Zeitung" and was enabled to maintain him-
self until 1 861, when an amnesty permitted him to return to
Prussia. He was made one of the editors then of the "Nord-
deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung" and as he was again given carte
blanche in his work, he found himself in the most comfortable
circumstances, as regarded his principles and his material wel-
fare, that he had known since he left Giessen. His experience
with English organizations led him to redouble his efforts in
developing self-conscious groups of workingmen — he had lost
his confidence in any effective middle-class movement years be-
fore. And he threw himself into the work with so much vigor
that the rebuff which came in 1862 was almost enough to em-
bitter him.
Bismarck had come into power and had won over the chief of
the "Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung," who, in turn, tried to
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158 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
persuade his colleague to restrain his logic and clever sarcasm
to the point of meditative theorizing. This attempt at persua-
sion failed, and agents of Bismarck approached with offers of a
brilliant sort which assured Liebknecht of a high position as the
wage of compromise. The only alternative was poverty, and
Liebknecht chose poverty. He resigned his position.
During this second term of financial uncertainty he was con-
stantly persecuted by the police, who were never without hope
that he might be tormented to the point of open resistance — an
excuse for his arrest. But he worked on with perfect calmness,
objected always to Bismarck's policy and joined Lassalle's move-
ment. In 1865 a certificate of his good behavior in London was
demanded of him, but as the English have no bureau for the in-
vestigation of peaceable individuals, he could not obtain one.
He was arrested and told to leave Berlin, and his appeals to high-
est authorities were met by a reiterated command that he
should go.
This banishment meant an acquaintance and friendship with
Bebel in Leipzig. They spent a year together, and the struggle
was mainly for Internationalism, which became the point of dif-
ference between the Marxists and the Lassellians. It was due
to Liebknecht's efforts that there were so many converts to the
Marx program.
After a time, family affairs called him to Berlin, and as there
was an amnesty — understood by Liebknecht to cover his case —
he returned without fear. He was in Berlin but four weeks when
again arrested, and imprisoned for five months; his ban was
still in force. When he came out of prison he found his wife
dead; she had suffered too much, and her life was sacrificed to
the work for the many sufferers.
In 1867 the Federation of Educational Societies endorsed the
International platform after long, hard work done by Bebel and
Liebknecht, and the founding of the Social Democratic party in
i86q marked a definite growth in the great movement. From
that time on, Liebknecht's life was divided between his work as
editor of Socialist papers and as Socialist member in the German
parliament ; first in the North German Reichstag and then in the
Imperial Reichstag, where his opposition to Bismarck's policy
was unceasing.
During the Franco-Prussian war he spoke constantly against
the bills of appropriation as well as against the principles con-
trolling a war-making government. His opposition brought
about his arrest in 1872 for treason. For two years he was in
imprisonment, and came out to find himself re-elected to his seat
in the Reichstag.
To follow his activities is to trace every phase of Socialist de-
velopment in Germany, from the acceptance by a united party of
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WILHELM LIEBKNECHT 159
the platform drawn up at Gotha (1875) to the recent discussion
of measures which took the attention of the last conference in
October. With the founding of the "Vorwaerts" as the organ
of the party he was made its editor, and everything that he wrote
hit the mark, and brought terror to the Philistines. He alter-
nately counselled his comrades and hurled powerful invectives
against compromise and capitalism.
The newspapers were suppressed in 1890 and the 67 societies
in Berlin were forced to sham dead, but this martyrdom only
served to increase secret activities, and at the next election there
were 311,961 votes from Berlin alone. Later in the year Lieb-
knecht spoke to a meeting of the International at Halle, at which
four hundred delegates from ten different countries were pres-
ent. And it seems as if this leader of men were always present
at the great conferences held from year to year. At the one in
Breslau in 1896 he replied to the contemptible phrase of the
Kaiser, who had called the Socialists "Rotte von Menschen,"
and, though a man of seventy years, a leader of the people and a
deputy in the Reichstag, he was sentenced to a four months' im-
prisonment for lese majeste.
He pointed the prison out, one day last year, as we were riding
out of Berlin on the elevated. "It would not have been so dis-
agreeable if the room had been large enough to walk in, and if
it had not been over the kitchen, where they were always cook-
ing cabbage!" ,
Yet he spoke of his persecution in the most philosophical man-
ner; he knew why he had experienced the blows of a monarch-
ical and capitalistic society, and that knowledge gave him the
power of repose. And besides, he could see the great results of
his unremitting effort; in the immense growth of the Socialist
vote, which in Germany in 1898 amounted to two millions and
a quarter, in the great spread of the International principles, and
in the fear of existing governments.
He lived to fulfill the words he spoke in his defense in 1872:
"A two-fold ideal has been before me since my youth — a free
and united Germany and the emancipation of the working peo-
ple, that is, the destruction of class rule, which is synonymous
with the freeing of humanity. For this double ideal I have
fought with my best powers, and for this double ideal I shall
fight as long as there is breath in my body. Das will die Pflicht!
(that wills Duty!)" Charlotte Teller.
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SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM.
Until the middle of this century the favorite theory with those
who attempted to explain the phenomena of History was the
Great-Man-Theory. This theory was that once in a while through
infinite mercy a great man was sent to the earth who yanked hu-
manity up a notch or two higher, and then we went along in a
humdrum way on that level, or even sank back till another great
man was vouchsafed to us. Possibly the finest flower of this
school of thought is Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship. Un-
scientific as this theory was, it had its beneficient effects, for these
heroes or great men served as ideals, and the human mind re-
quires an unattainable ideal. No man can be or do the best he is
capable of unless he is ever reaching out toward an ideal that lies
beyond his grasp. Robert Browning put this truth in the mouth
of Andrea del Sarto, whom he makes say:
"Ah! but a man's reach should exceed his grasp."
And Tennyson puts the same truth in the mouth of the ancient
sage who tells the youthful and ambitious Gareth who is eager to
enter into the service of King Arthur of the Table Round.
"the King
Will bind thee by such vows as is a shame
A man should not be bound by, yet the which
No man can keep."
This function of furnishing an ideal was performed in former
times by these great men and more especially by those great men
whom legend, myth and superstition converted into gods. But
with the decay of the old faiths the only possible fruitful ideal left
is the ideal upheld by Socialism, the ideal of the Co-operative
Commonwealth in which the economic conditions will give birth
to the highest, purest, most altruistic ethics the world has yet seen.
It is true the co-operative commonwealth is far more than a Uto-
pian ideal, it is a scientific prediction, but at this point I wish to
emphasize its function as an ideal.
But it is obvious that this Great Man theory gave no scientific
clue to history. If the Great Man was a supernatural phenom-
enon, a gift from Olympus, then of course History had no scien-
tific basis, but was dependent upon the arbitrary caprices of the
Gods, and Homer's Iliad was a specimen of accurate descriptive
sociology. If on the other hand the great man was a natural phe-
nomenon, the theory stopped short half way toward its goal for it
160
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SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM 161
gave us no explanation of the genesis of the Great Man nor of the
reasons for the' superhuman influence that it attributed to him.
Mallock,one of the most servile literary apologists of capitalism,
has recently in a book called "Aristocracy and Evolution" at-
tempted to revive and revise this theory and give it a scientific
form. He still attributes all progress to Great Men, but with the
brutal frankness of modern bourgeois Capitalism, gives us a new
definition of Great Men. According to Mallock, the great man is
the man who makes money. This has long been the working
theory of bourgeois society, but Mallock is the first of them who
has had the cynicism or the stupidity to confess it. But mark you,
by this confession he admits the truth of the fundamental premise
of Modern Scientific Socialism, our Socialism, viz., that the eco-
nomic factor is the dominant or determining factor in the life of
society. Thus you see the ablest champion of bourgeois capital-
ism admits, albeit unconsciously, the truth of the Marxian Mate-
rialistic Conception of History. This book, however, is chiefly re-
markable for its impudent and shameless misrepresentations of
Marx and Marxism, but these very lies show that intelligent apol-
ogists of capitalism know that their only dangerous foe is Marxian
Socialism.
But just as according to the vulgar superstition the tail of a
snake that has been killed wiggles till sundown, so this book of
Mallock's is merely a false show of life made by a theory that re-
ceived its deathblow long since. It is the wiggling of the tail of
the snake that Herbert Spencer killed 30 years ago with his little
book "The Study of Sociology." The environment philosophy in
one form or another has come to occupy the entire field of human
thought. We now look for the explanation of every phenomenon
in the conditions that surrounded its birth and development. The
best application of this environment philosophy to intellectual and
literary phenomena that has ever been made is Taine's History of
English Literature.
But while Spencer's Study of Sociology is the most signal and
brilliant refutation of the Great Man theory, no one man really
killed that theory. The general spread and acceptance of Darwin-
ism has produced an intellectual atmosphere in which such a
theory can no more live than a fish can live out of water.
By Darwinism we mean, as you know, the transmutation of spe-
cies by variation and natural selection — selection accomplished
mainly, if not solely, by the struggle for existence. Now this doc- '
trine of organic development and change, or metamorphic evolu-
tion, which was, with its originators, Wallace and Darwin, a pure-
ly biological doctrine, was transported to the field of Sociology by
Spencer and applied with great power to all hum&n institutions,
legal, moral, economic, religious, etc. Spencer has taught the
world that all social institutions are fluid and not fixed. As Karl
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162 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
Marx said in the preface to the first edition of Capital: "The pres-
ent society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change,
and is constantly changing," and again in the preface to the sec-
ond edition, "Every historically developed social form is in fluid
movement." This is the theory of Evolution in its broadest sense,
and it has struck a death-blow to the conception of Permanence
so dear to the hearts of the bourgeoisie who love to sing to their
Great God, Private Property, "As it was in the beginning, is now
and ever shall be, world without end. Amen." "Sarcula Sarcu-
lorum." "For the Ages of Ages."
Before natural science had thus revolutionized the intellectual
atmosphere, great men proclaiming the doctrines of Modern So-
cialism might have been rained down from Heaven, but there
would have been no socialist movement. In fact many of its ideas
had found utterance centuries before, but the economic condi-
tions, and consequently the intellectual conditions were not ripe,
and these ideas were still-born, or died in infancy.
The general acceptance of the idea that all things change, that
property, marriage, religion, etc., are in process of evolution and
are destined to take on new forms prepared the way for "Socialism.
A man who has read Wallace and Darwin is ready to read Marx
and En gels.
Now the story of the birth of Darwinism is itself a proof of the
fallacy of the Great Man theory, and a signal confirmation of the
view that new ideas, theories and discoveries emanate from the
material conditions. The role of the great man is still an import-
ant one. We need the men who are capable of abstract thought,
capable of perceiving the essential relations and significance of the
facts, and of drawing correct inductions from them. Such men
are rare, but there are always enough of them to perform thes*
functions. And the Great Man, born out of due time, before the
material and economic conditions are ripe for him, can effect noth-
ing. When the conditions are ripe, the new idea always occurs to
more than one man; that is, the same conditions and facts force
the same idea upon different minds. It is true there is always
some one man who gives this idea its best expression or best
marshals the evidence of the facts in its support, and the idea usu-
ally becomes inseparably linked with his name. In this way does
our race express its gratitude to its great men and perpetuate their
memory.
Darwinism or the theory of Natural Selection was in this way
independently discovered by Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles
Darwin, and the popular judgment has not erred in giving the
chief credit to Charles Darwin.
Wallace's paper "On the Law which has Regulated the Intro-
duction of New Species," written by Wallace on one of the far
away islands of the Malay Archipelago, where he was studying the
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SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM 163
Geographical Distribution of Species appeared in the "Annals of
Natural History'' in 1855. Its resultant conclusion was "that
every species has come into existence coincident both in space
and time with a pre-existing closely allied species." Mr. Darwin
tells us that Mr. Wallace wrote him that the cause to which he at-
tributed this coincidence was no other than "generation with mod-
ification," or in other words that the "closely allied antetype" was
the parent stock from which the new form had been derived by
variation.
Mr. Wallace's second paper, which in my judgment is the clear-
est and best condensed statement of the Doctrine of the Struggle
for Existence and the principle of Natural Selection ever written,
was written by Mr. Wallace at Ternate in the Malay Archipelago,
in February, 1858, and sent to Mr. Darwin. It was called "On the
Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original
Type. ,, Mr. Wallace requested Mr. Darwin to show it to Sir
Chas. Lyell, the father of Modern Geology, and accordingly Dr.
Hooker, the great botanist, brought it to Sir Chas. Lyell. They
were both so struck with the complete agreement of the conclu-
sions of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace that they thought it would
be unfair to publish one without the other, so this paper and a
chapter from Darwin's unpublished manuscript of the "Origin of
Species" were read before the Linnaean Society on the same even-
ing and published in their Proceedings for 1858, ancl thus ap-
peared in the same year, 1859, as Marx's Critique of Political
Economy. This theory of Natural Selection is, you know, in
brief, that more animals of every kind are born than can possibly
survive, than can possibly get a living. This gives rise to a Bat-
tle for Life. In this battle those are the victors who are the best
able to secure food for themselves and their offspring and are
best able by fight or flight to protect themselves from their en-
emies. This is called the Law of the Survival of the Fittest, but
remember, the Fittest are not always best or most highly devel-
oped forms, but simply those forms best suited to the then exist-
ing environment. These two extremely interesting papers of
Wallace are printed as the two first chapters of his book "Nat-
ural Selection and Tropical Nature," published by MacMillan, a
book so fascinating I would beg all my hearers and readers who
have not read it to do so.
This law of double or multiple discovery holds good of all
great discoveries and inventions, and is notably true of the first
of the three great thoughts that we ordinarily associate with the
name of Karl Marx. There three are:
1. The Materialistic Conception of History.
2. The Law of Surplus Value.
3. The Class Struggle — the third being a necessary conse-
quence of the first two.
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164 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
Now the Materialistic Conception of History was independ-
ently discovered by Engels just as Darwinism was by Wallace,
as you will see by reading Engels' preface to the Communist
Manifesto. But just as Wallace gave Darwin all the credit, so
Engels did to Marx.
I.
THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
What do we mean by the Doctrine of the Materialistic Con-
ception of History, or of "Economic Determinism," as Ferri calls
it? We must make sure we understand, for there is cant in So-
cialism, just as there is in religion, and there is good reason to
fear many of us go on using these good mouth-filling phrases,
"Materialistic Conception of History," "Class-Conscious Pro-
letariat," "Class Struggle/' and "Revolutionary Socialism," with
no more accurate idea of their meaning than our pious friends
have of the theological phrases they keep repeating like so many
poll-parrots.
At bottom, when we talk intelligently of the Materialistic Con-
ception of History, we simply mean, what every man by his daily
conduct proves to be true, that the bread and butter question is
the most important question in life. All the rest of the life of the
individual is affected, yes dominated by the way he earns his
bread and butter. As this is true of individuals, so also it is true
of societies, and this gives us the only key by which we can un-
derstand the history of the past and, within limits, predict the
course of future development.
That is all there is of it. That is easy to understand, and every
man of common sense is bound to admit that that much is true.
The word "materialistic'' suggests philosophy and metaphysics
and brings to our minds the old disputes about monism and dual-
ism, and the dispute between religious people who believe in the
existence of spirit and scientists who adopt modern materialistic
monism. But no matter what position a man may hold on these
philosophical and theological questions he can with perfect con-
. sistency recognize the fact that the economic factor is the dom-
inant, determining factor in every day human life, and the man
who admits this simple truth believes in the Marxian Materialis-
tic Conception of history. The political, legal, ethical and all
human institutions have their roots in the economic soil, and an>
reform that does not go clear to the roots and affect the economic
structure of society must necessarily be abortive. Anything that
does go to the roots and does modify the economic structure, the
bread and butter side of life, will inevitably modify every other
branch and department of human life, political, ethical, legal, re-
ligious, etc.
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SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM 165
This makes the social question an economic question, and all
our thought and effort should be concentrated on the economic
question."* I am aware of the fact that in the Preface to his "So-
cialism, Utopian and Scientific, ,, Engels apparently identifies the
materialistic conception of History with Materialistic Monism in
Philosophy, but this connection or identification is not a necessary
logical consequence of any statement of the Materialistic Concep-
tion of History I have been able to find by Engels, Marx, De-
ville, Ferri, Loria, or any Marxian of authority and to thus iden-
tify it, is detrimental to the cause of Socialism, since many people
who would not hesitate to admit the predominance of the eco-
nomic factor, instantly revolt at the idea of Materialism.
Let us take Engel's statement of this doctrine in the preface to
the Manifesto. It is as follows :
"In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic
production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily
following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and
from which alone can be explained the political and intellectual
history of that epoch. ,,
Does not that agree exactly with the doctrine as I have stated
it? Or, take this statement of it by Comrade Vail, of Jersey City:
"The laws, customs, education, public opinion and morals are
controlled and shaped by economic conditions, or, in other words,
by the dominant ruling class which the economic system of any
given period forces to the front. The ruling ideas of each age
have been the ideas of its ruling class, whether that class was the
patricians of ancient Rome, the feudal barons of the middle ages,
or the capitalists of modern times. The economic structure of
society largely controls and shapes all social institutions, and also
religious and philosophical ideas."
Or, take this, by Marx himself: "The mode of production
obtaining in material life determines, generally speaking, the so-
cial, political and intellectual processes of life.*'
Does not that again agree exactly with the doctrine as I have
stated it?
The doctrine is stated in nearly the same language by Loria
•"If this be true the question naturally arises: Why do the socialists. In-
stead of using economic methods to solve an economic question, organize them-
selves Into a political party? To answer this question, we must first see what
the State is and what relation it holds to the economic conditions. Gabriel
Devil le defines the State thus: "The State is the public power of coercion
created and maintained In human societies by their division into classes, a
power which, being clothed with force, makes law* and levies taxes. As long
as the economically dominant class retain full possession of this public power
of coercion they are able to use It as a weapon to defeat every attempt to
alter the economic structure of society. Hence every attempt to destroy eco-
nomic privilege and establish Industrial Democracy inevitably takes the form
of a political class struggle between the economically privileged class and the
economically exploited class.
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166 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
and Ferri, though Ferri calls it Economic Determinism, which
seems to me a much better and more exact name. Ferri points
out that we must not forget the intellectual factor and the various
other factors, which, though they are themselves determined by
the economic factor, in their turn become causes acting concur-
rently with the economic factor. Loria deals with this whole sub-
ject most exhaustively and interestingly in his recently translat-
ed book "The Economic Foundations of Society. ,, Curiously
enough in this long book he never once gives Marx the credit
of having discovered this theory, but constantly talks as though
he — Loria — had revealed it to a waiting world. The method of
his book is the reverse of scientific, as he first states his theory
and conclusions and then starts to scour the universe for facts
to support them, instead of first collecting the facts and letting
them impose the theory upon his mind. And his book is by no
means free from inconsistencies and contradictions. But while
you can not place yourselves unreservedly and confidingly in his
hands as you can in those of Karl Marx, still his book has much
value. He shows most interestingly how all the connective insti-
tutions, as he calls religious and legal and political institutions,
have been moulded in the interest of the economically dominant
class, and how useful they have been in either persuading or forc-
ing the so-called "lower classes" to submit to the economic condi-
tions that were absolutely against their interests. But the system
of Wage Slavery is such a beautifully automatic system, itself*
subjugating the workers and leaving them no choice, that I can-
not see that the capitalists have any further need of any of these
connective institutions save the State. At all events, these insti-
tutions are fast losing their power over the minds of men. But
the most valuable part of his book is the immense mass of evi-
dence he has collected showing how political sovereignty follows
economic sovereignty or rather, revenue, and how all past history
has been made up of a series of contests between various kinds of
revenue, particularly between rent from landed property and
profits from industrial or manufacturing capital, but as this is
nothing more than the Class Struggle between the lauded aris-
tocracy and the bourgeoisie, a struggle sketched by master hands
in the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, we can give
Loria no credit for originality, but merely praise his industry in
collecting evidence.
Gabriel Deville, who has probably done more than any one
else to popularize the ideas of Marx in France, has pointed out
a very nice distinction here. Man, like all living beings, is the
product of his environment. But while animals are affected only
by the natural environment, man's brain, itself a product of the
natural environment, becomes a cause, a creator, and makes for
man an economic environment, so that man is acted on by two
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SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM 167
environments, the natural environment which has made man and
the economic environment which man has made. Now in the early
stages of human development, it is the natural environment, the
fertility of the soil, climatic conditions, abundance of game, fish,
etc., which is all important, but with the progress of civilization,
the natural environment loses in relative importance, and the eco-
nomic environment (machinery, factories, improved appliances,
etc.) grows in importance until in our day the economic environ-
ment has become well nigh all-important. Hence the inadequacy
of the Henry George theory which places all its stress on one ele-
ment of the natural environment, land, and wholly neglects the
dominant economic environment.
But while this economic environment, the dominant factor in
human life, is the child of the brain of man, man in its creation
has been forced to work within strict limitations. He had to make
it out of the materials furnished him in the first place by the nat-
ural environment and later on by the natural environment and
the inherited economic environment, so that in the last analysis
the material and economic factors are supreme.
We Marxians are often accused of neglecting the intellectual
factor and, as Deville says, a whole syndicate of factors; but we
do not neglect them. We recognize their existence and their im-
portance, but we do refuse to waste our revolutionary energy on
derivative phenomena when we are able to see and recognize the
decisive, dominant factor, the economic factor. As Deville says,
we do not neglect the cart, because we insist upon putting it be-
hind the horse instead of in front of or alongside of him, as our
critics would have us do. Now, if the economic factor is the
basic factor, it behooves us to understand the present economic
system — Marx's Law of Surplus-Value is the key to this system.
II.
THE LAW OF SURPLUS-VALUE.
The second great idea that we associate with the name of Karl
Marx is the Law of Surplus- Value. Curiously enough this one
technical theory is the only discovery that bourgeois writers and
economists give Marx credit for. If you look up Marx in any
ordinary encyclopedia or reference book you will find they make
his fame depend on this theory alone, and to make matters worse
they usually misstate and misrepresent this theory, while they in-
variably fail to mention his two other equally great, if not greater
discoveries, the Materialistic Conception of History and the Class
Struggle. I think the reason they give special prominence to
this law of Surplus- Value is that, as it is a purely technical the-
ory in economics, it is easier to obscure it with a cloud of sophis-
try and persuade their willing dupes that they have refuted it.
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168 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE IV
And then they raise the cry that the foundation of Marxian So-
cialism has been destroyed and that the whole structure is about
to tumble down on the heads of its crazy defenders, the Social-
ists. It is much to be regretted that many so-called Socialists
are found foolish enough to play into the hands of the Capitalists
by joining in the silly cry that some pigmy in political economy
has overthrown the Marxian theory of Value. I suppose these
co-called Socialists are actuated by a made desire to be up to date,
to keep up with the intellectual band-wagon. Revolutions in the
various sciences have been going on so rapidly, they fancy that a
theory that was formulated forty years ago must be a back-num-
ber, and so they hasten to declare their allegiance to the last new
cloud of sophistry, purporting to be a theory of value, that has
been evolved by the feeble minds of the Anarchists of Italy or
the Capitalist Economists of Austria. The Fabians of London
are the most striking example of these socialists whose heads
have been turned in this way by the rapid progress of science.
But the followers of Bernstein in Europe and this country are
running into the same danger and in their eagerness to grasp
the very newest and latest doctrine will fall easy victims to the
first windy and pretentious fakir who comes along. Ask iry one
of these fellows who tells you that the Marxian theory of Value
has been exploded, to state the new and correct theory of Value
that has taken its place and you will find that he cannot state
a theory that you or I or any other man can understand. He will
either admit he is floored, or else he will emit a dense fog of
words. I challenge any one of them to state a theory of value
that he himself can understand, let alone make anyone else under-
stand.
Now the Marxian theory of Value can be clearly stated so that
you and I can understand it. But let us begin with surplus-value.
This theory of surplus-value is simply the scientific formulation of
the fact that workingmen had been conscious of in a vague way
long before Karl Marx's day, the fact that the workingman don't
get a fair deal, that he don't get all he earns. This fact had been
formulated as long ago as 1821 by the unknown author of a letter
to Lord John Russell on "The Source and Remedy of the Na-
tional Difficulties." In this letter the very phrases "surplus pro-
duce ,, and "surplus labor" are used. You will find that Marx
refers to this letter in a note on page 369 of the American Edi-
tion of Capital. The Russian writer Slepgoff quotes several pas-
sages from this letter in an article in the December, 1899, number
of La Revue Socialiste, and it is annoying to see how near to
Marx's conclusions this unknown writer had come eighty years
ago, but the conditions were not ripe and his letter would to-day
be forgotten if Marx had not embalmed it in a footnote. I con-
fess I was surprised to learn that this was not a purely original
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SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM 169
discovery of Marx's, but the fact that it is not is one more signal
confirmation of the theory I have given in this lecture of the
double or multiple discovery of great ideas.
But let us resume the discussion of Surplus Value and see just
what it really is.
No matter where you, my workingman hearer or reader, may
work, the person or corporation or trust for whom or which you
work gets back more out of your labor, than he or it pays you
in wages. If this is not so, your employer is either running a
charitable institution or he is in business for his health. You
may have employers of that kind here on the East Side of New
York, but I have never met any of them elsewhere. It is impos-
sible to conceive of a man going on day after day, week after
week, year after year, paying you wages, unless he receives more
for the product of your labor than he pays you in wages. Now,
this difference between what you get and what he gets is what
we call surplus-value.
This surplus-value is the key to the whole present economic
organization of society. Theend and object of bourgeois society
is the formation and accumulation of surplus-value, or in other
words, the systematic robbery of the producing class. Now
when we say robbery, we do not njean to accuse employers of
conscious dishonesty. They are the creatures of a system just
as the workers are, but it is a system which makes their interests
diametrically opposed to the interests of their employees. The
only way the capitalists can increase their relative share of the
product of their employees' labor is by decreasing the relative
share of the latter.
Now, if out of the total product of his labor the workingman
only receives a part, then it is true to say that he works part of the
day for himself and part of the day gratuitously for the capitalist.
Let us say, for purposes of illustration, that he works three hours
for himself and seven hours for his employer for nothing. This
three hours we call his necessary labor time, or his paid labor;
and the seven hours we call his surplus labor time or his unpaid
labor. The product of his three hours' labor is the equivalent of
his wages or as we call it, the value of his Labor-Power. The
product of the other seven hours of his labor, his surplus or un-
paid labor, is surplus product or surplus-value. Starting from
the' fact that every workingman knows to be true, that he don't
get all he feels he ought to get, we have thus, I think, made the
definition of surplus-value clear to every one of you, but we have
been talking of surplus-value and value of labor power and we
have not yet defined Value.
When we speak of the value of an object we mean the amount
of human labor that is embodied or accumulated in it, that has
been spent in fitting it to satisfy human needs. And we measure
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170 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
the amount of this human labor by its duration, by labor-time.
You, if you are a skilled, highly-paid worker, receiving say four
dollars a day, may say that it absurd to say that an hour of your
labor produces no more value than an hour of Tom's or Dick's
or Pete's, who get only eighty cents a day apiece. You are quite
right. Your hour does produce more value. The labor-time
that determines value is the labor-time of the average, untrained
worker. Again, you may waste your time, spending half of it
looking out of the window or carrying on a flirtation. This
wasted labor does not count in measuring value. The only labor
that counts is the labor that is socially necessary under normal
conditions for the production of the given commodity. Again,
labor spent to produce a useless article does not produce value.
To produce value the labor must serve to satisfy human wants.
Now, I think this is quite clear so far. We know what surplus-
value is. We know what value is and how it is measured. Let
us now see what is meant by the Value of Labor-Power.
To begin with, what is Labor-Power? When a workingman
goes upon the market to sell something for money with which to
buy bread and butter and the other necessaries of life, what has
he to offer for sale? He cannot offer a finished commodity, such
as a watch, a shoe or a book, because he owns nothing. He has
neither the necessary machinery, the necessary raw material, nor
even the necessary place in which to work to make these things.
These all belong to another class who by owning them, in fact,
own him. He cannot offer labor for sale, because his labor does
not yet exist. He cannot sell a thing that has no existence.
When his labor comes into real objective existence, it is incor-
porated with materials that are the property of the class that rules
him, and no longer belongs to him. He cannot sell what he don't
possess. There is only one thing he can sell, namely, his mental
and physical or muscular power to do things, to make things.
He can sell this for a definite time to an employer, just exactly
as a livery stable keeper sells a horse's power to trot to his cus-
tomers for so much per hour. Now this power of his to do things
is what we call his labor-power; that is, his capacity to perform
work. Now, its value is determined precisely like the value of
every other commodity, i. e., by the labor time socially necessary
for its production. Now the labor time socially necessary for the
production of labor-power is the labor time socially necessary
to produce the food, clothing and shelter or lodging that are
necessary to enable the laborer to come on the labor market day
after day able physically to work, and also to enable him to beget
and raise children who will take his place as wage-slaves when
he shall have been buried by the County or some Sick and Death
Benefit Fund.
In the example we used above we assumed that the laborer
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SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM fll
worked three hours a day to produce a value equal to the value of
his labor-power. The price of this value, the value produced by
his paid labor, we call "Wages." This price is often reduced by
the competition of "scabs'' and other victims of capitalist exploit-
ation below the real value of labor-power, but we have not time
to go into that here, so we will assume that the laborer gets in
wages the full value of his labor-power.
Well, then, if he produces in three or four hours a value equal
to the value of his labor-power or wages, why doesn't he stop
work then, and take his coat and hat and go home and devote tlie
rest of the day to study, reading, games, recreation and amuse-
ment? He don't because he can't. He has to agree (voluntarily,
of course) to any conditions that the class who by owning his
tools own him choose to impose upon him, and the lash of the
competition of the unemployed, Capital's Reserve Army, as
Marx called it, is ever ready to fall upon his naked back.
Why is he so helpless? Because he and his class have been
robbed of the land and the tools and all the means of sustenance
and production, and have nothing left them but that empty
bauble, legal liberty, liberty to accept wages so small that they
barely enable them to live like beasts, or liberty to starve to death
and be buried in unmarked graves by the public authorities.
The wage system necessarily implies this surplus labor or un.-
paid labor. So long as there are wages, workingmen, you will
never get the full product of your labor. Let no reformer beguile
you into a struggle which simply aims to secure a modification
of the wage system! Nothing short of the annihilation of the
wage system will give you justice and give you the full product
of your labor.
But while wages necessarily imply surplus-labor, the reverse
is not true. You can have surplus-labor without wages. Sur-
plus-labor is not an invention of modern capitalists. Since
Mankind emerged from the state of Primitive Communism typi-
fied by the Garden of Eden in the Hebraic myth, there have- been
three great systems of economic organization: I. Slavery; 2.
Serfdom; 3. The Wage System. It is interesting to note the
varying appearances of surplus or unpaid labor under these three
systems.
Under the first, Slavery, all labor appears as unpaid labor.
This is only a false appearance, however. During a part of the day
the slave only reproduces the value of his maintenance or "keep."
During that part of the day he works for himself just as truly as
the modern wage-slave works for himself during a part of his
day. But the Property relation conceals the paid labor.
Under the second system, Serfdom, or the Feudal System,
The paid labor and the unpaid labor are absolutely separate
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172 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
and distinct, so that not even the most gifted orthodox political
economist can confuse them.
Under the third system, Wage Slavery,
The unpaid labor apparently falls to Zero. There is none.
You voluntarily enter into a bargain, agreeing that your day's
work is worth so much, and you receive the full price agreed up-
on. But again this is only a false appearance. As we saw by
our analysis, a part of the wage-slave's day is devoted to paid
labor and a part to unpaid. Here wages or the money relation
conceals the unpaid labor and disguises under the mask of a
voluntary bargain the struggle of the working class to diminish
or abolish unpaid labor, and the class-conscious, pitiless struggle
of the capitalist class to increase the unpaid labor and reduce
the paid labor to the minimum, i. e., to or below the level of bare
subsistence. In other words the Wage System conceals the
Class Struggle.
III.
THE CLASS STRUGGLE.
The third of the great ideas that will always be associated with
the name of Karl Marx is that of the Class Struggle. The Class
Struggle is logically such a necessary consequence of both the
Materialistic Conception of History and the Law of Surplus-
Value, that as we have discussed them at some length, but little
need be said of the Class Struggle itself. In discussing the Ma-
terialistic Conception of History we showed with sufficient full-
ness and clearness that, in the language of the Communist Mani-
festo, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history
of Class Struggles." Hence it is clear the doctrine of class
struggles is a key to past history. But it is more than this. It
is a compass to steer by in the present struggle for the emancipa-
tion of the proletariat, who cannot, fortunately, emancipate them-
selves without emancipating and ennobling all mankind.
The Law of Surplus- Value has shown us that there is a deep-
seated, ineradicable conflict between the direct class interest of
the proletariat which coincides with the true interests of the hu-
man race, and the direct, conscious guiding interest of the class
who own the means of production and distribution. There is
here a direct clash between two hostile interests. This fact has
been skilfully hidden from the eyes of the workers in the past,
but the modern socialist movement, aided by the growing brutal-
ity of the capitalist class, is making it impossible to fool them in
this way much longer. In other words, the workingmen are be-
coming Class Conscious, i. e., conscious of the fact that they, as
a class, have interests which are in direct conflict with the selfish
^N
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SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM 178
interests of the capitalist class. With the growth of this class-
consciousness this conflict of interests must inevitably become a
political class struggle. The capitalists, the economically privi-
leged class, struggle to retain possession of the State that they
may continue to use it as a weapon to keep the working class sub-
jugated, servile and dependent. The proletariat, the working-
class, struggle to obtain possession of the State, that they may
use it to destroy every vestige of economic privilege, to abolish
private property in the means of production and distribution, and
thus put an end to the division of society into classes, and usher
in the society of the future, the Co-operative Commonwealth. As
the State is in its very nature a class instrument, as its existence
is dependent upon the existence of distinct classes, the State in
the hands of the victorious proletariat will commit suicide, by
tearing down its own foundation.
Until a man perceives and is keenly conscious of this class con-
flict, a conflict which admits of no truce or compromise, and
ranges himself on the side of the workers to remain there until
the battle is fought and the victory won, until the proletariat shall
have conquered the public powers, taken possession of that class
instrument, the State (for so long as the State exists it will be a
class instrument) and made it in the hands of the working class
a tool to abolish private ownership in the tools and the land, in
the means of production and distribution, and to abolish all
classes by absorbing them all in the Brotherhood of Man; until
a man has thus shown himself clearly conscious of the Class
Struggle, with its necessary implications, his heart may be in the
right place, but laboring men can not trust him as a leader. The
fact that the hearts of many popular reformers, political candi-
dates and so-called "friends of labor," who ignore the class
struggle, are on the right side, but gives them added power to
mislead and betray workingmen. Workingmen, I beg you to
follow no leader who has not a clear enough head to see that there
is a class struggle, and a large enough heart to place himself on
your side of that struggle. But remember that you are not fight-
ing the battle of a class alone. You are fighting for the future
welfare of the whole human race. But while this is true, it is also
true that your class must bear the brunt of this battle, for yours
is the only class that, in the language of the Manifesto, "has noth-
ing but its chains to lose, and a World to gain!" The rich have
much to lose, and this very real and tangible risk ol lose not un-
naturally blinds the eyes of most of them to the more remote,
though infinitely greater compensations that Socialism has to
offer them. The Middle Class, even down to those who are just
a round above the proletarians on the social ladder, love to ape
the very rich and the capitalist magnates. It tickles their silly
vanity to fancy that their interests are capitalistic interests, and
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174 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
their mental horizon is too hopelessly limited for them to perceive
that the proletarian whom it pleases them to despise as the great
army of the "unwashed" are in truth fighting their battle for them,
and receiving instead of gratitude, contempt, gibes and sneers.
Socialism does occasionally receive a recruit from the very high-
est stratum of society, but I tell you it is easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle than it is for a member of the Middle
Class to become a scientific socialist.
I have said the Class Struggle is a compass to steer by in the
present struggle for the emancipation of the working class. If
we steer by this compass, we will resolutely reject all overtures
from political parties representing the interests of other classes,
even when such parties in their platforms endorse some of the im-
mediate demands of the socialists; we will "fear the Greeks bring-
ing gifts;" we will not be seduced for a moment by the idea of
fusion with any so-called Socialist party which is not avowedly
based on the Class Struggle; especially as individuals, will we
avoid giving our votes or our support to any Middle Class party
which we may at times fancy to be "moving in the right direc-
tion. J ' The history of the class conflicts of the past shows that
whenever the proletarians have joined forces with the Middle
Class or any section of it, the proletarians have had to bear the
heat and burden of the day and when the victory has been won
their allies have robbed them of its fruits.
You, yourselves, then, Workingmen, must fight this battle!
To win, it is true, you will need the help of members of the other
classes. But this help the economic evolution is constantly
bringing you. It is a law of the economic evolution that with
the progress of industrialism the ratio of the returns of capital to
the capital invested constantly diminishes, (though the aggregate
volume of those returns increases). You see this in the constant
lowering of the rate of interest. Now, as their incomes decrease,
the small capitalists and the middle class, who form the vast ma-
jority of the possessing class, become unable to continue to sup-
port the members of the liberal professions, the priests, preachers,
lawyers, editors, lecturers, etc., whose chief function heretofore
has been to fool the working class into supporting or at least sub-
mitting to the present system. Now, when the income of these
unproductive laborers, an income drawn from the class hostile
to the proletariat, shall sensibly decrease or, worse still, cease,
these educated members of the liberal professions will desert the
army of Capital and bring a much-needed reinforcement to the
Army of Labor.
Some of the more far-seeing upholders of the present system
are keenly conscious of this danger. And this danger (even
though most of the expansionists may not realize it), is one of the
most potent causes of the Imperialism, Militarism and Jingoism
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SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM 175
which are at present disgracing the civilized world. England in
Africa and America in the Philippines are pursuing their present
criminal policies, not solely to open new markets for English and
American goods, but also to secure new fields for the investment
of English and American capital, and thus to stop the continuous
dropping of the rate of interest and profits, for if this cannot be
stopped, the intellectual proletariat will join the sweating prole-
tariat, and the Co-operative Commonwealth will be established
and then the poor capitalists will have to work for their livings
like other people.
This was clearly pointed out by a capitalist writer in an essay
in a recent number of the Atlantic Monthly, who warned the capi-
talist opponents of McKinley, Destiny & Co.'s policy of expan-
sion that they were attempting to close the only safety-valve*
which under present conditions could not avert but postpone the
Social Revolution.*
But, friends, nothing can postpone it long, for the industrial
crises and financial panics are recurring at shorter and shorter
intervals, and the process of recovery from them is slower and
slower, and every panic and crisis forces thousands of educated,
intelligent members of the middle class off their narrow and pre-
carious foothold down into the ranks of the proletariat, where the
hard logic of the facts will convert them to class-conscious Social-
ism.
Workingmen, I congratulate you upon the approaching victory
of the workers and the advent of the Co-operative Commonwealth
for I tell you, in the language of an English comrade:
"Failure on failure may seem to defeat us; ultimate failure is im-
possible.
Seeing what is to be done then, seeing what the reward is.-
Seeing what the terms are, — are you willing to join us?
Will you lend us the aid of your voice, your money, your sym-
pathy?
May we take you by the hand and call you 'Comrade V "
•
Robert Rives La Monte.
•The expansion policy also acts as a safety valve by promoting the emi-
gration of the discontented and by providing employment abroad for the edu-
cated proletarians who would, no doubt, become "dangerous and Incendiary
Socialist agitators" in their native lands.
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A BAD QUARTER OF AN HOUR.
From "Remembrances of Karl Marx," by Wilhelm Liebknecht
It was in London, Nov. 18, 1852. The "Iron Duke" and "Vic-
tor in a Hundred Battles" — whom, nevertheless, the English
people at the time of the Reform movement had made very gen-
tle and meek — Lord Wellington, had died in Walmer Castle on
the 14th of September, and on the 18th of the following Novem-
ber the "National Hero" was to be given a "national burial" and
be laid with "national pomp'' in St. Paul's Cathedral along with
other "national heroes." Since the day of his death, two months
before, preparations for this ceremony had been going on all
over England, and especially throughout London, for since, ac-
cording to English judgment the man himself had excelled all
previous heroes, so all previous ceremonies must now be excelled
in glitter and grandeur. And this was the day. All England
was in motion, all London on its feet. Hundreds of thousands
from the provinces, thousands upon thousands from foreign
lands streamed by, and with these were all the millions of the
metropolis.
I abhor such spectacles and have always avoided great crowds,
and, like the most of my fellow-exiles, would have preferred to
stay at home or spend the day in St. James Park. But two little
lady friends scattered my desires to the winds. Que femme veut,
Dieu le veut — what woman wishes, happens — and especially
when they are six and seven years old, like my two little friends.
And we were such good friends — the black-eyed, black-haired
Jenny Marx — her father's head over again; and the fair, elegant
Laura, with the roguish eyes, the very picture of her beautiful
mother, who, in spite of the bitter earnestness of the exile,
could laugh just as rogfuishly as the merry little "Lorphen"; yes,
indeed, we were good friends, the little maidens and I.
And the two little girls, who from the first day we came to
know each other, attached themselves to me and always clung
close to me as long as I was in sight, contributed in no
small decree during: the time of the London exile to that keep-
ing up of my spirits to which I owe my life. Nothing cheers
and strengthens more at such critical times than the presence
of children. How often, when I could no longer contain myself,
I have fled to my little friends and wandered with them through
streets and parks. The melancholy thoughts were then quickly
scattered and I could return to the struggle for existence with
renewed strength and courage.
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A BAD QUARTER OF AN HOUR 177
I soon became known as the "story teller," and was always
greeted with joyful cries for more stories. Happily, I knew
many tales; but when my stock was exhausted I was forced to
put together others — a trick at which I was soon caught, for
these bright little maidens soon detected any attempt on my part
to serve up a ragout composed of fragments of old stories; and
so I was finally forced to invent new ones. Thus from very
necessity I was forced to become, most certainly not an author,
but a sort of "Storysmith," forging together stories out of bits
of ancient history. Never did anyone have a more receptive, ap-
preciative audience. But to where have I wandered? I started
to tell about my bad quarter of an hour.
"Be very careful with the children. Do not get caught in the
crowd !'' Frau Marx had said to me as I started for the "show"
with an impatient dancing maiden on either hand. And down
in the hall Lenchen,* who had come to the door to see us off,
called after us, "Be careful, Old Library," (the joking nickname
the children had given me). Marx, who was ordinarily a late
riser, was not yet visible.
I had made my plans — we had no money to hire a place at a
window or on a bench — the funeral procession went through the
Strand along the Thames. We must go along a street that
emptied into the Strand from the north and sloped away to the
river.
With a girl on either hand and the luncheon in my pocket, I
made for the point of view I had selected — a spot not far from
the Temple Bar — the old city gate that separated Westminster
from the city. The streets, which had been uncommonly alive
since morning, now swarmed with people, yet since the pro-
cession had to pass through widely separate sections of the city
the millions were somewhat scattered and we reached our chosen
point without any great crowding. It proved to be thoroughly
satisfactory. I placed myself upon one of the steps, with the
two girls clinging fast to me and I to them, one on either hand,
on the step above me.
Hark! A movement in the human sea; a far away increasing
roar like the dull rage of the ocean, coming ever nearer and
nearer. An "Oh!" rising from thousands on thousands of
throats! The procession is here, and from our excellent po-
sition we can see it as in a theatre. The children are entranced.
No crowding — all my fears are banished.
Long, long continued the gold-bedecked procession with the
gigantic, gorgeous catafalque, bearing the "Conqueror of Na-
•Helene Demuth, the old servant of the Marx', who shared all their suffer-
ings with them and now lies burled with the family In HIghgate cemetery,
London.
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178 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE JV
poleon." Ever something new and more and still more — until
at last no more came. The last gold-bespangled rider has passed.
Suddenly there came a start, a rushing* forward of the masses
packed in behind us. Everyone wishes to follow the procession.
I braced myself with all my strength and sought to shelter the
children, that the stream might roar by without touching them.
In vain. Against the tremendous physical weight of this great
mass no human power could prevail. It would have been as easy
for a fragile skiff to have breasted the ice flood of an angry river
just released from the grasp of a hard winter. I must give way,
and pressing the children close to me I sought to escape from
the main current. Presently I appeared to have succeeded and I
drew a breath of relief, when suddenly a new and mightier hu-
man wave broke upon us from our right; we were swept out
into the Strand where the thousands and hundreds of thousands
who were pressed together in this grept pulsating artery of a street
were storming along after the procession in the hope of enjoying
another spectacle. I shut my teeth together and seek to raise
the children upon my shoulders, but I am too hard pressed — con-
vulsively I seize the arms of the children, the whirlpool tears us
apart and I feel that a force is pushing itself between me and the
children — shoving in like a wedge, ever further and further — the
children are torn away from me — all resistance is useless — I must
let go of them lest I break their arms or tear them from the
sockets. It was a terrible moment.
What shall I do? Before me rose the Temple Bar with its
three passageways, the central for wagons and horses, the ones at
the side for foot passengers. Against the walls of these open-
ings the human stream had piled itself up like the waters of a
river against the piers of a bridge — I must get through. If the
children were not already crushed to earth — and the despairing
cries of anguish that now rose around me testified to the extent
of the danger — then I hoped to find them on the other side,
where the pressure must be somewhat less. Filled with this hope
I struggled like a madman with breast and elbows. But in such
a crushing mob the individual is like a straw on the surface of a
maelstrom. I struggle and struggle — a dozen times I think to
make the entrance only to be thrown to one side. Finally a sud-
den shock, a terrible crushing — and I am on the other side and
out of the wildest of the tumult. I rushed hither and thither
looking. Nothing! My heart gave way within me — when sud-
denly from two clear, childish voices came "Library !*' I thought
I must be dreaming. It was the music of the angels, for before
me stood, laughing and uninjured, the two girls. I kissed them
and hugged them. For a moment I was speechless. Then they
told me how the human wave that had torn them from me had
borne them safely through the gate and then flung them to one
side — under the shelter of the very walls which on the other side
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A BAD QUARTER OF AN HOUR 179
had been the cause of this fearful damming up. There they had
clung to a projecting point of masonry and remembered my old
caution that if in any of our excursions we should get lost they
were to remain still in the same spot and place, or as near to it as
possible.
We returned in triumph to the house. Mother Marx, Marx
and Lenchen received us with rejoicing, for they were much
worried, having heard that there was a terrible crowd and that
many had been crushed and injured. The children had no sus-
picion of the danger that had hovered above us and were per-
fectly satisfied, and I did not tell that evening through what a
fearful quarter of an hour I had lived.
On the spot where they were torn from me many women were
killed and the frightful scenes of that afternoon contributed in
no small degree to secure the destruction of the Temple Bar,
which had formed so horrible an obstacle to movement.
For me, however, that bad quarter of an hour is as vivid in my
memory as if it had happened but yesterday. And since that time
I have never gone with children into the midst of great crowds,
and I never will again. — Translated by A. M. S.
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UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN BELGIUM.
Brussels, August 10, 1900.
As was foreshadowed in our former letter (in the July issue
of the Review), the Parti Ouvrier is preparing itself to take up
the struggle which is to give it Universal Suffrage pure and
simple — one man one vote. It will be the last act in a long series
of efforts, the first of which dates back to the middle of the cen-
tury, though they were the work of certain individuals rather
than the desire to realize the programme of a party.
Our constitution of 1830, while it recognized the equality of
the citizens before the law, had established a limited suffrage.
The constitution left to the legislature the care of regulating the
qualifications of voters, subject to certain fixed limitations. So,
after various changes, the law finally reduced the rating for
voters to the minimum annual property tax of 42 francs.
The next change, therefore, could only be accomplished by a
revision of the constitution, and that requires a dissolution of
the chambers, new elections, the meeting of the two chambers
(deputies and senators), in a single convention, in which propo-
sitions can only be adopted by a two-thirds vote.
When in 1885 the Parti Ouvrier was formed, universal suf-
frage and a revision of the constitution were demanded by the
left (progressive) wing of the Liberal army. But the bulk of
the Liberal army, like the Catholic army, did not wish to hear
them mentioned.
The watchword of the Liberals was "Capacity." However,
as they had always failed to provide us with compulsory educa-
tion, and as our economic regime prevents many children from
going to school and obliges a large portion of the others to leave
it at the age of ten or eleven; most of the workingmen would
have been turned away from the polls.
It was really not until after the formation Qi the Parti Ouvrier
that a serious propaganda in favor of Universal Suffrage began.
We can not here retrace all the events of the struggle, among
which were the rifle-volleys of 1886. Suffice it to say that it
ended, so far as political results go, in the first revision of the
constitution, that of 1893. The success was enormous when we
consider that not one socialist had a seat in the parliament and
that all the representatives except a few radicals were thoroughly
hostile to the revision.
Thus they did not yield their consent except under compulsion,
a general strike having been declared in the industrial Walloon
districts of the country. The working class of Brussels was on
180
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UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN BELGIUM 181
strike, and events were taking a revolutionary turn, when the
reactionists thought it prudent to yield. Universal suffrage was
granted in the sense that every Belgian citizen twenty-five years
of age obtained a vote, but it was vitiated by the second and
third votes accorded to property and education.
For the sake of completeness let us add that in the "Law Rela-
tive to Local Elections," which was directly enacted, the reac-
tionaries found it necessary to require that the voters in the com-
munes be thirty years of age, and they granted an additional
fourth vote on the basis of property qualifications.
We consider, then, that we have long enough endured this
odious and complicated system, which favors all sorts of frauds,
and has no object but to assure clerical domination. To-day
every one is making ready, and in October or November, when
the Chambers meet, the proposition for revision will be made.
The struggle will begin, and I am firmly convinced that it will
finally take a turn at which we ourselves will be astonished — so
strong is the desire throughout Belgium, not only in the work-
ing class but in a good part of the middle class, to be rid of the
clerical reaction and at last to realize political equality. Remem-
bering the struggle of 1893, who can doubt our victory? Then
we had been established only a few years, our organizations were
young, we had not a member in Parliament; we had against us
the united force of the Catholics and Liberals (except a few radi-
cals). To-day our Socialist party is most solidly organized, we
have the experience of numerous struggles, we have 32 deputies
and 3 senators. In the chamber of deputies about 25 Liberals
are already won over to Universal Suffrage, and some Christian
Democrats have pledged themselves to its support. As for the
government, although it is playing its last cards, it has the dis-
couragement of one who knows that he will be beaten, and that
he will have no support in public opinion. The one feeble sup-
port it finds is given by the moderate Liberals, whose foremost
thought is to act against Socialism.
The journals of the reactionary party realize that this time we
do not propose to be content with a compromise, so they are at-
tempting a diversion by attributing to us the most Machiavellian
schemes; it appears that we wish to overthrow the monarchy and
establish the Socialist Republic immediately. Others claim that
our aim is by the aid of Universal Suffrage to abolish Propor-
tional Representation. It is the Liberals, in particular, who are
afraid of this last abolition, for it is safe to say that without Pro-
portional Representation the Liberal party would no longer
exist.
It is very probable that the recent idea of sending Belgian
volunteers to China is partially inspired by the desire of creating
a diversion in public opinion to take attention away from the
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182 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
electoral question. The Parti Ouvrier has just put out posters
to protest against this military policy which has just been inaug-
urated, against this sending of Belgian volunteers into China for
no purpose but to protect the interests of a few big capitalists.
Entile Vinck.
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SOCIALISTS AND ANARCHISTS IN ITALY.
The unfortunate assassfnation of the King of Italy by the anar-
chist Galtano Bresci has been a fine occasion for the conservative
bourgeoisie to attempt fixing the responsibility upon the Socialist
party, and to persecute it in consequence; while in foreign coun-
tries the event has given factitious arguments in support of the
opinion that in Italy Socialism and anarchism are the same thing.
Now as for the Italian conservatives, the evidence as to the
facts alleged by them against the Socialists has been so convinc-
ing that a reaction in public opinion is already manifest, while in
two electoral divisions, a week after the commission of the crime,
the voters named two Socialists, one of them the editor of "Avan-
ti," whose great crime in the eyes of the conservatives was that he
had shouted in the chamber of deputies, "Down with the King!"
For those outside Italy, here are a few facts which are worth
more than any amount of argument. The first manifestations
of socialism in Italy were anarchistic, or more properly, Bakou-
nist. The "Alliance" of Bakounine found in Italy between 1867 and
1878 a more favorable soil than did the "International" of Karl
Marx, and at Rimini in 1872 a congress was held to disavow the
principles of Marx's "International'' and to break off all union
with the general council of London. Among the most influential
men in this Bakounise movement there were in Italy Cafiero,
Nabrazzi, Andrea Costa, Enrico Malatesta and Bakounine him-
self.
In the years which followed this period of tentative organiza-
tion of the Bakounist section of the International — even then it
was called "Internazionalisti" — bread riots, revolts and insurrec-
tions broke out here and there- over the country, so that the gov-
ernment profited by them to dissolve the sections of the Interna-
tional and to follow up its more conspicuous adherents.
In view of these inconclusive exploits of the anarchist-revolu-
tionary propaganda, while in Germany Marxian Socialism was
making giant strides, some of the thoughtful minds of the move-
ment became persuaded that another route must be taken. So in
1879 Andrea Costa wrote to his friends that the Internationalists
were getting out of touch with practical affairs and real life, and
that they were not giving proper attention to the study of the
economic and moral conditions of the people nor of their immed-
iate needs.
That was the first step toward the highway of Marxian social-
ism. But though already here and there an advocate of the pure
socialist idea raised a clear voice above the tumultuous confusion
183
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184 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VI E W
of the anarchist-revolutionary propaganda, there followed, before
the formation of the Italian Socialist Party, a period of working-
men's associations which was the passage between anarchism and
socialism. Meanwhile vigorous and genial men like Turati, and
^devoted, angelic spirits like Prampolini, were preparing and
molding the transition for the moment of its maturity. Turati
popularized the Marxian doctrines in his "Critica Sociale" with
his vigorous dialectic, and Prampolini won adherents to them
among the peasants by his mild and persuasive words, spoken
and written.
At the Italian Labor Congress, held at Milan in August, 1891,
occurred the first positive rupture between the socialists and the
anarchists. An order of the day proposed by the anarchist Gori
was rejected by 104 votes to 13, and they laid the foundation of
the Italian Labor Party, having for its aim the emancipation of
the workers from the political and economic monopoly of the cap-
italist class, and for its means a participation in the struggles of
public life, the solidarity of labor, propaganda and co-operation.
It was the conception of the Socialist Party which took place
at Milan, and its birth was at Genoa in 1892. At the same time
occurred the second and last noisy and violent rupture of the so-
cialists and the anarchists, and the Italian Socialist Party came in-
to existence on the basis of the class struggle, the struggle for the
conquest of the public powers and the socialization of the means
of labor and production — that is to say, its basis and methods
are the same as those of the collectivist Marxian socialist parties
of other countries. And on this line and no other the Italian So-
cialist Party has fought ever since. Since that period the anar-
chists have not ventured to interfere any further with the socialist
congresses, and nothing more is said of them among the social-
ists. They did attempt to enter the International Congress at
Zurich and at London, but they were expelled as at Genoa.
But their struggle against the socialists was not thus appeased,
on the contrary it became more bitter as the socialists gained
ground among the working masses, and increased their parlia-
mentary strength at each election. Especially has their hatred
been shown against Andrea Costa. As soon as he entered the
Socialist Party they burned him in effigy, not being able to burn
him in person. Prampolini was even attacked by an armed anar-
chist, just like a crowned head! The anarchists reproached and
still reproach the Socialists for lulling to sleep the revolutionary
spirit of the people with their delusive electoral tactics, with the
mirage of the conquest of the public powers, which, they say,
benefits no one but the chosen officials, and corrupts them in the
unsavory struggle for legislative spoils. The anarchists' attacks
in their press and in their debates at meetings have always been
extremely violent. Even two months ago, during the obstruc-
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SOCIALISTS AND ANARCHISTS IN ITALY 185
tionist struggle, their central organ, D'Ancona's "Agitazione,"
attacked the Socialist Party and its deputies. Really, one only
need observe the way the anarchists have treated the socialists, in
order to form a correct conclusion as to the existence of any con-
nection between them.
The socialists have always answered these attacks with the calm
energy that goes with conscious strength. Only, as they are de-
fending the liberties of all, even of the priests, when the anar-
chists were arrested, sent to the accursed islands on "forced domi-
cile," or imprisoned illegally, the socialists have protested, both
in their press and in the chamber, have demanded the abolition
of "forced domicile/' and have helped the sufferers by sending
them money and in other ways. They fought their ideas, but
they defended their persons.
And on certain occasions it has happened that in an agitation
for personal liberty against the tyranny of the "law of exception,"
the Anarchists have struggled by the side of the Socialists and
Republicans in an electoral contest over the name of a man con-
demned by the military tribunals. But that is all. This is the ex-
tent of the relations that have existed or exist between Socialists
and Anarchists in Italy.
But as to the Anarchists a word should be added. The openly
individualistic tendency which shows itself in the "propaganda by
deed'' is done with in Italy .There is left the revolutionary type
called Socialist-Anarchist, accepting the whole Socialist pro-
gramme except the electoral struggle. Their aim is to prepare
for the revolution, but they denounce regicide, as do also the anar-
chists of Russia. Although they do little or nothing, at least they
fight the Socialists. Their work ends there.
The individualist-anarchist type seems to have taken refuge
in Paterson, New Jersey, where it has for a leader Ciancabilla,
who edits his "Aurora" there. This Ciancabilla was, three years
ago, a reporter for "Avanti/* the central organ of Italian Social-
ism. Afterwards he was in Greece during the Greco-Turkish
war, and sent some very fine letters to that paper. On his return
to Bologna, during the socialist Congress* he had an interview
with Malatesta, the last recognized leader of Italian Anarchism,
and his liking for Anarchism began. After some travels in
Europe, he sailed for New York, where he began to write in "La
Questione Sociale," violently attacking the Socialists, who made
a vigorous defense in the "Proletario," at Patterson. Naturally,
his connection with "Avanti" was cut off after his adhesion to
anarchism.
As this Ciancabilla was propagating an anarchism which ap-
parently was not that of Malatesta, the latter left London for New
York and forced his retirement from "La Questione Sociale."
Ciancabilla then founded the "Aurora." The struggle between
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186 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
the two factions, individualist-anarchist and communist-anarchist,
soon reached an acute stage.
These are the facts, which can not be confuted nor denied. And
here is the conclusion: If there is any party which can regret
the crime of Bresci, it is by all means the Italian Socialist Party,
which after struggling for years to educate and organize the toil-
ing masses, thus diminishing the unhappy riots due to discontent
and hunger, even though the discontent has increased, this party,
which has fought a brave fight for the maintenance of liberty
against the attempts of the reactionaries, runs the risk of seeing its
work thrown into confusion and fettered by the act of a Bresci,
who gives strength to the monarchy and a pretext for persecution
to the reactionaries.
But Socialism will go on all the same, in spite of Bresci's pistol
shots and the expiring blows of the reaction represented by our
ruling classes.
Rome, August 13, 1900. Alessandro Schiavi.
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THE WORLD OF LABOR
[This department is edited by Max S. Hayes.]
Now some genius proposes to throw the poor "white wings/'
or street cleaners, out of their jobs. It used to be a standing joke-
let among high-priced, skilled mechanics that, if displaced by
labor-saving machinery, they could as a last resort "shovel ma-
nure on the streets.'' New York papers make the announcement
that street-sweepers, teamsters, snow-shovelers and other workers
are to be put out of business by a big machine, and one that can
do three times the work of the laboring brigade. This machine
sprinkles, sweeps and cleans at the same time. Already it has
been placed on trial by Commissioner Nagle. The device was in-
vented in Wheeling, W. Va., and is controlled by a $5,000,000
trust. The company that exploits the machine operates its wag-
ons by compressed air, and electricity can also be used. The
machine is so constructed as to be able to sweep the streets
under all conditions. Dust, dirt and slush disappear before its
onslaught. In winter an attachment is arranged by which snow
shoveling can be done. So it appears that the machine-chased
mechanic cannot find refuge in the laborious work of cleaning
streets.
At this writing the Canadian trade unionists are preparing
for their coming congress, which will be held in Ottawa on the
15th inst. Last year the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada
instructed its secretary to provide for the taking of a vote of all
affiliated unions on the question of taking independent political
action. The secretary reports that the proposition was carried
by an overwhelming majority, and there is now every indication
that the workers of the Dominion will declare in favor of sever-
ing all connection with the old parties, though it is admitted
that the politicians will not allow their exploited labor voters to
be torn from their grasp without a struggle.
The organization boom has not lessened. Nearly all national
unions report steady increase in memberships. Nearly six hun-
dred organizers are at work. Trade, however, has not improved
much, as there are still thousands idle in the iron and steel, textile,
boot and shoe and other industries. Many far-seeing agitators
believe the coming winter will witness a repetition of "hard
times," or industrial stagnation.
187
188 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
The iron workers in the large blasting furnaces are greatly dis-
turbed on account of a complete revolution that is being made in
the production of pig iron. In all plants scores of laborers were
employed in unloading, mixing, reloading in trucks, hoisting and
dumping the ore into the furnaces. The American Steel and
Wire Trust has completed a device, and placed the same in ope-
ration in Ohio mills, by the operation of which the ore on the cars
is forced up an inclined plane and dumped into the furnaces at tre-
mendous rapidity and with the aid of comparatively few laborers.
Now the Illinois Steel Co., another trust plant, has completed a
revolution at the other end of the industry. After the hot metal
leaves the furnaces it no longer runs into troughs and molds made
in the sand. Under the old system 250 men were required in the
latter company's 16 blast furnaces, who worked night and day
making molds in the sand for the ingots and making troughs in
the sand for the beds on the open hearth in front of the furnaces,
through which the molten iron could run into the molds. Be-
sides the great expense of carrying the 250 employes on the pay
roll, there was the additional disadvantage that after a run had
been made there was a wait of several hours for the metal to cool,
then each ingot had to be lifted out of the mold and carried by
hand to trucks and afterward transferred to freight cars. The
new machine does all this work. Several hundred steel mold are
arranged on a long link belt; the belt is kept in constant motion
and brings the molds under the noses of the furnaces. The molt-
en iron fills the molds as they pass under and then the belt carries
them down into a deep trough of running cold water. In pass-
ing through this the ingot is cooled and then is carried by the belt
out into the yards, where the mold dumps the ingot into a freight
car standing under it. Hardly a minute of time is consumed
from the moment the molten iron leaves the furnace until it lies
an ingot in the freight car ready to be dumped into the steel
furnaces. The machine costs $50,000 to construct and is operated
by but six men. It is estimated that the "revolutionizer" will pay
for itself in three months in the saving of wages. Yet, the capi-
talistic politicians and newspapers blithely inform us that the ma-
chinery question is of no importance! And while these dis-
placed iron workers suffer and starve and vainly search for em-
ployment, they can console themselves with the thought that Mr.
John W. Gates, one of our foremost iron and steel trust mag-
nates, won added laurels unto himself the other day by standing
on top of the Eiffel Tower, in Paris, and hurling handsful of 20-
cent (franc) pieces, representing wealth produced by displaced
and hungry American workmen, at the applauding and strug-
gling multitudes below. Such are the fruits of the class struggle,
of capitalism, of voting for the two old parties and in favor of the
private ownership of the socialized tools of production.
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THE WORLD OF LABOR 189
One of the notable events of the month was the convention
of the International Typographical Union in Milwaukee. Much
important business of interest to the craft was transacted. Sec-
retary Bramwood reported that the net increase of members was
1459, making a total membership of 32,105. Thirty-nine mem-
bers, suffering from various diseases, were admitted to the Print-
ers' Home, at Colorado Springs, Colo., of which number six
died and eight withdrew again. For one day at least the I. T. U.,
the oldest and perhaps the most influential national organiza-
tion, was on a progressive basis, when the following resolution,
intro3uced by Delegate Bandlow, of Cleveland, was passed by a
vote of 87 to 73:
"Resolved, That the International Typographical Union em-
phasizes that it is distinctly a class organization, embracing in its
membership all workers following the kindred crafts in the print-
ing industry, who upon the industrial field are antagonized by
their employers on every occasion, which fact should impress
the members of this organization that to subserve their interests
as wage workers it is essential that they act as a unit upon the
political field, from whence capitalism derives its power to op-
press, and we declare it consistent with the ethics of unionism
and the sacred duty of every honorable member of this union
to sever his or her affiliation with all political parties of the
exploiting class, which is constantly encroaching upon the liber-
ties of the working people."
Although, through the manipulation of small fry old party
politicians, and distinct hostility from the daily press, the fore-
going resolution was reconsidered- and tabled, its passage .origin-
ally was a distinct and progressive forward stride, and, there-
fore, a big moral victory. It is believed that at next year's con-
vention, after the heat of a national political campaign has worn
off arid the capitalistic system has gone on developing, the I. T. U.
will be ready to define its position in the great class struggle
now waging in terms that will not be misunderstood.
Two more states have been organized by the Social Democrats
during the past month — Iowa and North Dakota, which, with
Nebraska and Utah, make a total of twenty-five states in which
electoral tickets have been placed in the field. South Dakota and
other northwestern states will also nominate electors for Debs
and Harriman. Reports from every section of the country state
that Ihe greatest enthusiasm prevails for the United Socialist
movement. Intelligent trade unionists are particularly active in
aiding the cause, and the outlook for a big vote for socialism is
very promising.
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EDITORIAL
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION.
The near approach of the International Socialist Congress .
suggests the question if the time is not now here when it is prac-
ticable and advisable to take some action looking to the organ-
ization in a tangible manner of the international solidarity of the
socialist movement. There are but few socialists that do not
view with regret the dissolution of the "old International." All
may admit that its form had outgrown its usefulness, yet it is to
be regretted that that form was not sufficiently flexible to adapt
itself to the new need. At the present time there seems to be a
general feeling that the time is ripe for the formation of some form
of international association. It is recognized that such an or-
ganization must necessarily be a very flexible one. It could
have no dictatorial or even judicial powers and the majority of
its functions must be clerical.
Some of the minor arguments upon grounds of simple utility
that might be offered for such an organization are that it would
afford a means to secure international translations of the classics
of socialism. It is a disgrace to the English speaking socialists
that but a small portion of the works of Marx have ever been
translated into that language, while nowhere, in any language,
is there to be found anything, approaching a complete and uni-
form edition of the works of Marx or Engels. Again, there
should be a much greater interchange of workers and speakers
between different nationalities and in a great many cases inter-
national lecture tours could be arranged of very great benefit
both to the country visited and the one from which the speaker
came. It has also been pointed out that future generations will
judge the socialists of this day with harshness because there is
nowhere any attempt being made on an international scale to
gather and preserve the manifold historical documents that are
daily issuing from the socialist presses of the world.
All these, however, are but trifling reasons why such an inter-
national organization should be formed, beside others that are'
now just beginning to arise. At the present time there is scarcely
a country in which the socialists are not divided on questions of
policy. Many of these questions are identical in principle in two
or more countries. Examples of such will at once occur to every
socialist. Such is the question of "Ministerial Socialism" in
France, the relation of the socialist parties to the Trade Unions
in America and England, the relation of the co-operatives to the
190
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION 191
socialist movement, the question of "Municipal" or "State So-
cialism," etc. While it is wholly out of the question to establish
a court of final appeals on such matters, or perhaps even a court
of arbitration, it is not impossible to gather together the opin-
ions of a large number of representative socialists, not only in
the countries directly concerned, but in others that may have
passed through similar stages, or who by the very fact of the
greater distance from the scene of discussion are able to see more
impartially, if less accurately, than those immediately concerned.
To some extent the various Reviews and other publications will
meet this need, but an official central body that would gather
all facts and opinions throwing light on these disputed questions
and prepare them for publication would be of the greatest serv-
ice and would save an immense amount of energy now wasted
in what are too often fruitless discussions.
Much more important than any of these is the need which
will soon begin to make itself felt for an expression in substan-
tial form of the international solidarity of labor at times of great
need in the various national struggles. Belgium is in the midst
of such a contest at present in her struggle for Universal Suf-
frage, and while the Belgian comrades are perhaps better able to
stand alone than those of any other nation, yet it is probable
thev would not refuse assistance from the comrades of other
lands were they in a position to give it. England will be in such
a struggle at her next general election. It will not be many
years before the socialists of America will be face to face with
capitalism in a contest whose success or failure will mean much
to socialism. With her heterogeneous population she must have
workers, writers and speakers in almost every language. How
much better these could be secured were there some agency
through which the men who had already fought the battles of
socialism in the native lands of these people could be enabled to
reach them again in their adopted country.
Finally, the time is now fast approaching when the govern-
ments of some of the great nations of the world- will fall into
the hands of the socialists. When that time comes it is of para-
mount importance to the cause of socialism that as few blunders as
possible should be committed. We want no more Communes.
Hence it is of the greatest importance that so far as possible the
combined energy and intelligence of the international socialist
movement should be at the disposal of those who have gained
the victory. On some small scale this same principle has been
recognized in France and Belgium by the Federations of Social-
ist Municipal Councillors, who seek thus to bring the combined
knowledge of all to the assistance of those holding municipal
offices.
As to what the exact form and details of this international
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192 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
organization shall be must be left for the comrades assembled at
the Congress to decide. There must be at least one salaried
secretary in the central office, with as many corresponding secre-
taries as there are countries who care to be represented. There
should probably be some kind of an advisory board, the majority
of whose members should be residents of the country in which the
General Secretary is located. Where there are two or more con-
flicting parties in any country there is no reason why each should
not maintain its own local corresponding secretary, who in the
majority of cases would be the general secretary of that party
who could perform this work in addition to his other duties. If
this matter can be brought before the International Congress
and discussed, it does not seem too much to expect of them to
say that such details do not offer insuperable obstacles to the
success of the plan.
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T25 INTERNATIONAL
SOCIALIST REVIEW
Vol. I OCTOBER, 1900 No. 4
THE IMPLICATIONS OF DEMOCRACY.
A prominent economist* has recently said that the coming
political struggle is to be between plutocracy and democracy.
This recognition of what is commonly called "the class struggle"
gives occasion for a restatement of the meaning and implications
of democracy,**
Democracy has received no better definition than the classi-
cal one of Lincoln's, "a government of the people by the people
and for the people."
It may be said that this begs the whole question of the neces-
sity of government at all, that by the abolition of special eco-
nomic privilege, primarily in land ownership, even the present
functions of government would gradually disappear. I have
recently seen a sober argument written to prove that all so-
called monopoly rests upon the private ownership of land; that
by the absorption of rack rent by the community, all power of
exploitation would quickly disappear, so that the state will not
need to perform any common function, because the opportunity
for exploitation being gone this function can be delegated to
private persons in return for the competitive franchise value of
the same. In this writer's opinion "the whole question is one
of surplus value.*' If surplus value is eliminated, and only the
wages of superintendence remains, they will be determined by
the law of competition. In his opinion, interest is the out-
growth of rent, and he thinks that by the public appropriation
•Prof. W. G. Sumner, of Yale University.
••It is almost needless to say that I shall use the word democracy, not In
Its sentimental, but In its political and practical sense. Important as is the
moral and social temper that Is the flower of democratic Institutions, It Is
well not to confnse this temper and sentiment of wide human fellowship
with the form of organization which is to help bring It into being. When I
speak of democracy, I mean popular government, and not the sense of fel-
lowship with all sorts and condltons of men. Democracy is one thing, the
democratic spirit quite another. There are many who are filled with the dem-
ocratic spirit, men like Whitman, Wagner, Tolstoi, Kropotkln, who are by no
means representative democrats.
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194 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
of rent interest will vanish on account of the competitions of
capital. But the essential part of the argument for our pur-
pose is that the elimination of surplus value will remove all the
evils of competition, will render unnecessary the common per-
formance of public functions, and hence practically eliminate
government altogether.
Our first concern here is with the logic of the position.
When Lincoln spoke of "government of the people by the peo-
ple and for the people" he assumed that some sort of govern-
ment was necessary. The anarchist does nothing of the sort.
He sees in government simply one of the forms of economic
exploitation, of which the leisure class has assumed control
just as it has of religion, war or sports.
Here we have two distinct schools o£ thought, the govern-
mentalist, including the socialist, who declares that government
is necessary, and the anarchist, who declares that the laws of
competition and of supply and of demand, will remove the ne-
cessity for governmental action.
This brings us squarely to the issue. What is government?
Let us grant that it has been used as an exploiting function of
the leisure class; none the less it was a necessary function, just
as religion has been necessary. To a community free from su-
perstition, and acquainted with the laws of cause and effect, the
interjection of priestly functions will not be necessary; but while
the dignity and good will of supernatural beings needs to be
maintained ecclesiasticism will perform a necessary function.
So of war. Granted that the military class has taken ad-
vantage of the necessity of the community, or at least of the
dominant part of the community, for protection or aggression,
nevertheless this protection or aggression was necessary for the
then stage of evolution. That at a later stage neither a priestly
nor a military class will perform a necessary function does not
invalidate the necessity of their services in the past. How,
now, is it with the function of government? Is its desuetude
also measurably near and certain, as the anarchist claims? The
claim seems to arise largely from a failure to discriminate be-
tween the nature of the relation of government to the whole
people, as compared with religion and war. Religion and war
may or may not be necessary for the maintenance of the domi-
nant class. As a matter of fact, they have been necessary in
the past, but when the dominant class in society shall be the
productive rather than the acquisitive part of the community,
then the necessity for ecclesiastical and military institutions
will disappear. But government differs from religion and war
in that it is a vital function of a productive dominant class, no
less than that of an acquisitive dominant class. For what is
government? It is simply management, or more particularly
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THE IMPLICATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 195
and looked at from the standpoint of the ruling class, common
management. All government is the management of the in-
terests of some dominant class. It may be the land owning
class or the military class or the priestly class or stockholding
class or, fitly enough, the governing class, or of a combination
or compromise of these, but always that part of the community
which economically and politically, were it in power, had a com-
mon management of its important affairs. It constituted the
state and conducted "the government. ,,
If now, as we have some reason to believe will happen, the
productive part of the community becomes the dominant class,
they, too, will have common interests and the management of
those common interests will be government. Economic affairs
are not going to run themselves, and the larger the interests
are the more management there must be. No governmentalist,
least of all a socialist, supposes that business will take care of
itself. To state the problem in its simplest terms, government
is simply the most economical method of common management,
and democracy, since it is the management of the interests of
the entire community, must needs include more management
than any other form of government.
Government was once regarded as the instrument for keep-
ing the people in order. That was because policement was the
chief common interest of the dominant class. Mr. Spencer, as
is well known, conceives that "the end which remains for" gov-
ernment "is that of preserving the component members of so-
ciety from destruction or injury by one another.'* In other
words police duty is the extent of governmental function.
It is little wonder that the anarchist would, with such a view,
put an end to all government. But we are beginning to see
that the real function of government is not the enforcement of
conformity, not the compulsion of malcontents, not the damna-
tion of Satans, i. e., critics; it is the direction of the whole; it
is the management of common interests, and democracy the
latest form of government is the common management of com-
mon interests for the common good. Mazzini called it "the
progress of all through all, under the leadership of the best and
wisest."
J. A. Hobson, (Ruskin as a Social Reformer, p. 225), says:
"The real plea for democracy is the absolute need for the ex-
pression of the national life of the whole national organism in
the arts of government. * * * Democracy insists that the
people as a whole is rational, and that government must ex-
press this rationality'' (p. 225).
This self-activity of the whole organism is the thought hid-
den in Lincoln's famous words, "government of the people, by
the people and for the people."
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106 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
For, consider, what does government by the people mean?
It is a protest, high as heaven, against the whole notion that
government is a specialized function in the hands of a particular
class. However special an art the drafting of laws and their
administration may become, government "by the people''
means that they alone shall decide what to do for their own
good; that they alone have authority, and that their will alone,
and not that of any man or class of men, shall be dominant. This
involves the democratization of industry. As we shall see later,
the common interests of the whole people are vastly greater
than the common interests of a class of exploiters. Under the
management of the latter there has come into being a multitude
of private industrial tyrannies in the midst of a so-called polit-
ical democracy. The modern demand is that every public func-
tion shall be publicly managed, that the workers themselves
shall determine the conditions of work and elect their own gov-
ernors; that just as hereditary political rulers have given place
to elected servants, so industrial bosses shall be chosen by the
workers. Instead of a railway corporation having the right to
forbid its employes from engaging in politics — a proof of how
far industry dominates politics — railway managers shall be the
servants of railway workers. The productive and useful part of
the community will rule in a true democracy.
Under the definition that democracy is government by the
people we have to sadly acknowledge that our forefathers fell
far short of founding a democracy. What they founded was a
government which was a compromise between monarchy and
democracy by which, under the pretense that the people were
governing themselves, their will was hedged in on every side.
The people's representatives might make laws which would be
valid if another body chosen by thirteen other legislative bodies
should agree, and if the president, chosen not by the popular
vote, but by a few wise men whom they were permitted to elect,
did not interpose his veto, and if further these laws were not
declared unconstitutional by a set of judges whom the people
did not choose but were appointed by the president, whom they
did not choose, either. It would be hard to conceive a more
perfect system for thwarting the public will under the pretense
of expressing it. The means by which these hedges were drawn
around the public will was a paper constitution which was sup-
posed to be the embodiment of wisdom for all time to come,
and only by the most elaborate and roundabout process could
it be altered. The framers of the constitution did not trust their
own generation, and still less future generations, to govern
themselves. Wisdom shall die with us, and this paper consti-
tution shall take its place. They did for us politically what the
church fathers have done theologically — locked us into a strong
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THE IMPLICA TJONS OF DEMOCRACY 107
box and swallowed the key. Constitutions and creeds are built
of the same material, distrust of the people.
This poor thing we call democracy is not democracy at all.
Mr. James Bryce says of the United States Constitution that it
is "the least democratic of democracies." This constitution,
beginning so grandiloquently, "We the people of the United
States," leaves disenfranchised half of the people, one whole
sex, and so distrusts the other sex that it limits their power in
every possible way. "It is the work of men," says Mr. Bryce,
"who believed in original sin, and were resolved to leave open
for transgressors no door whioh they could possibly shut."
That is to say, men are bad; they will do wrong whenever they
can; they cannot be trusted to look for their own interests.
Since they demand some control of government, we shall have
to give them something, but we will curtail their power at every
possible point. We will make it as hard as possible for them
to express their will. So reasoned the authors of our famous
democratic constitution. This is not to deny that they set their
faces forward, but they did so very timidly. It is very well to
recognize their skill in steering through a difficult passage, but
to say, as Mr. Gladstone said, that the United States Constitu-
tion is "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a time by
the brain and purpose of man," is only to convict oneself of the
failings of its authors. The Constitution may have answered
the purpose of averting the evils which are sure to threaten
any government built upon distrust of the people; it may have
succeeded for a century in not dying; it may have been a great
advance upon existing forms of government; but it does not
follow from this that it is suited to a people who no longer be-
lieve in original sin, who now think of government, not as a
necessary evil for suppressing evil, but as the instrument of
common endeavor. However well it expressed the political
timidity of those who agreed to it, it does not express the polit-
ical needs of a new generation, and it has thus become a means
of tyranny, both in form and in fact.
Not only does our government fail of being a democracy in
not being common management, it also fails in that it does not
include in its management what have come to be common in-
terests. It is neither government by the people nor of the
people.
What does government of the people mean? It means the
direction of those interests that concern the people altogether.
It is the management of the common interests. Any govern-
ment is a management of some interests. A monarchy is a man-
agement of the royal interests in which incidentally the people
may be benefited, but will be exploited; an aristocracy is
management of the interests of the aristocrats with incidental
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198 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
good and inevitable sacrifice on the part of the people. A plu-
tocracy is management of the interests of the wealthy, where
the poor may share in the general advancement, but when their
interests and those of the wealthy conflict, they are sure to be
downtrodden. In any case, government is the management of
somebody's interests. But democracy is the management of
the interests of all. Government of the people, then, means
management of common interests.
When our government was inaugurated, the population was
largely made up of economic peers, largely agriculturists; there
were no glaring contrasts in the distribution of wealth; there
were large natural opportunities open to all. The common in-
terests that were recognized were chiefly those relating to the
keeping of the peace, domestic and foreign, and — including
local governmental functions — the care of highways, schools,
light-houses, the postal service, etc., and, as we have seen, there
was an attempt, a half-hearted attempt, to give the people — or,
at least, the propertied people — a voice in the management of
these interests.
But the times have changed since then. Wealth is concen-
trated, natural and artificial resources are monopolized, the in-
terests of the few are distinctly hostile to the interests of the
many. Two changes have taken place. The whole machinery
of government has passed into the control of a dominant minor-
ity. The instruments for the preservation of common inter-
ests, the universal protection of property, life, and well-being,
are manipulated for the special benefit of the wealthy, while, on
the other hand, what was the political function of the people
then has become a very small proportion of the common life.
Not that policement has not vastly increased. But at the same
time that our army and navy and local police and courts of jus-
tice have multiplied for the benefit of the rich, our common in-
dustrial life has grown vastly more. Whether we like it or not,
we are absolutely dependent upon tens of thousands of other
men every day for the supply of the simple wants of common
life. Modern life is city life, and the existence of the city man
hangs upon a complicated maze of threads, the cutting of any
one of which would bring disaster upon the whole mechanism
of society. A savage can subsist almost anywhere, but a civil-
ized man — i. e., a city man — can do nothing without thousands
of other men to help him live. So a primitive community can
get along with a political democracy, but government today
must needs take a hand in the varied functions of modern life,
for if it does not take part in them, then private tyrannies will
usurp its place. This has actually occurred in America. While
our common interests have increased immeasurably, our sys-
tem of government is dead and inelastic. It has not developed
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THE IMPLICATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 199
so as to form a framework on which the common life could find
support. It has the bones of a baby for the flesh of a man.
Under the name of a democracy there has grown up a huge
system of private tyrannies.
Say Mr. and Mrs. Webb in Industrial Democracy, p. 841:
"The framers of the United States Constitution, like various
parties in the French Revolution of 1789, saw no resemblance
or analogy between the personal power which they drove from
the castle, the altar and the throrie, and that which they left
unchecked in the farm, the factory and the mine. Even at the
present day, after a century of revolution, the great mass of
middle and upper class 'liberals' all over the world see no more
inconsistency between democracy and unrestrained capitalist
enterprise than Washington or Jefferson did between democ-
racy and slave owning. ''
A real democracy, on the other hand, would be a government
in which every interest as soon as it became a common interest
would find expression. It is bound to find expression somehow
or other, and if it cannot do so through the public function,
then it will through a private one. In other words, if the peo-
ple cannot themselves control that part of their life which they
live in common, then some tyrant will control it.
For example, when travel and trade take place on foot, either
of man or beast, a highway is all that needs to be common, but
when journeys can be accomplished and goods shipped only in
dependence upon a great railway system, and these railways
are so important that they are called "arteries of trade/' then
it's time for the people to manage their own railroads.
If they do not, a monstrous set of corporations will charge
"all that the traffic will bear"; it can, at its will, crush out indus-
tries, monopolize coal, fix the price of wheat, discriminate in
rates, rob oil refiners to pay the oil monopoly, bribe legisla-
tures, defy courts, extinguish whole communities, in short rule
the United States.
So long as the production of heat depended on each individ-
ual's sawing and splitting his own wood, the people altogether
might leave it to each one, but when it depends upon a network
of industries that involves everybody, then it is time that the
people together produced heat. If they do not, a coal baron
and an oil magnate and a gas king will produce it at their con-
venience and for their own profit, and will let the people freeze.
When the dissemination of news depended on individual let-
ter writing it was not undemocratic to send mail by private
messengers, but when it has become possible to gather and dis-
seminate news only by agencies like railroads and telegraphs,
telephones and express companies, that are a vital part of the
whole organism of modern society, then it is time that that
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MO INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
organism itself gathered and spread the news. If it does not,
then a press association and a newspaper trust, backed by a
railroad and a telegraph monopoly, will do it and stuff the peo-
ple as they please. Not only can these tyrants sift the news
which they dispense to suit their own ends, but can use the
whole reading public as a makeweight in a petty quarrel with
their employes. For four days, including the Fourth of July,
in the midst of an unusual demand for news, just after a great
battle, the city of Chicago was refused all the news, either on
paper or on bulletin, in order that a newspaper combination
might lock out its stereotypers. That is not democracy, com-
mon management of common interests; it is private tyranny,
nothing more and nothing less.
In an age when every man could produce his own bread on a
little plot of ground, society need not concern itself about the
matter, but when our daily bread is made by thousands of men
working and interworking, when it takes a gigantic system to
make a loaf of bread, then it has become time for the people to
make their own bread. If they do not, some Joseph will corner
the wheat market, as another Joseph did in Egypt long ago,
the railways will monopolize the elevators, some biscuit trust
will bake the bread and, at the price they see fit to fix, men and
children may starve.
Private property in land was well enough when there was
plenty for all and each lived off his own plot, but when few men
live off their own land, when the common interest in land is
what gives it its chief value, then it is time for the people to
hold the land in common. If they do not, landlords will own it
for them, making a landless and a homeless proletariat who
must beg for a chance even to work. Free land would at least
let men grub for a living.
When barter was the only form of trade and gold and silver
had only commodity value, it was not undemocratic to do with-
out a monetary system, but when precious metals have acquired
their chief value as instruments of exchange it is time for the
government to control their production and not leave it to the
haphazard work of foolhardy adventurers or the exigencies of
private mine owners.
Still more when trade has become so complicated and com-
merce so extensive that the precious metals are no longer capa-
ble of serving as true tokens of value, but a banking system
takes their place, common interest demands that the govern-
ment take charge of the banking system. If it does not, the
banking system will take charge of the government, and decide
not only questions of commerce, but of peace and war and
colonial expansion.
What I mean is simply this, that democracy is the common
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THBt IMPLICATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 201
management of common interests. So long as the common inter-
ests of a people are simply to repel invaders, or care for criminals,
or issue money, then its form is simple, but when its common
interests come to include the whole production of wealth, then
government must include this in its functions. If it does not,
some private tyranny will usurp this function, and the people
can have neither life, liberty, nor the pursuit of happiness. A
true democracy, then, involves this, that when in the course of
human events it becomes necessary for men to attain certain
ends by working in common, then it becomes necessary for
their common tool, i. e., the government, to assume the respon-
sibility of accomplishing this end. Unless this principle be car-
ried out, the very existence of democracy is at stake. Of what
use, I ask, is a democracy that concerns itself with a part, and
that a small part, of the common life and leaves the great part
to be controlled and managed for private profit? Yet this is
the condition that we are actually in. The common interests
that are controlled in common in America are not a tithe of
the common interests that actually exist. Granted that we are
somewhat democratic in going to war, in furnishing ourselves
with water, in punishing our criminals, in sending our letters,
but at the same time we are content to be slaves in getting the
news, in sending messages by telegraph or telephone, in using
gas and oil and coal, in traveling from place to place, in eating
meat, and salt, and crackers, and sugar, and wheat, in occupy-
ing land and in living in houses. Even when we die we must
ask leave of a private corporation for a grave in which our
bones may rest. Surely we have strained out the gnat and swal-
lowed the camel.
It is simply mockery to call that government a democracy
where the commonly managed interests are but a fraction of
the really common interests, where these governmental func-
tions are managed principally for the benefit of a favored class,
and even the form of democracy is a cloak to cover high-handed
imperialism. As Loria has pointed out, kings are but the tools
of the real economic rulers, and King William I. of America is
no exception to the rule, even though masked as "President."
The reason we are beset with private tyrannies is because
our so-called democracy is not a thorough-going democracy.
We have just enough government to serve as a bulwark behind
which the tyrants who really rule us can entrench themselves
and exploit us. There are then only two alternatives open to
us. We must either have more government or less. We must
have either a democracy — i. e., common control of common
interests— or else no common control whatever, either collect-
ivism or anarchism. The only scheme that is unreasonable is
our present one, for it is simply a tool in the hands of the few
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202 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
mighty against the many weak, and this is intolerable. This is
a sham democracy!
But there is still a third lack to be pointed out in our so-
called democracy. It is neither by the people nor of the people,
nor is it for the people. "The state exists," says Aristotle, "for
the sake of a good life, and not for the sake of life only" (3:9).
If government were simply by the people and of the people,
what good would it be? To manage our common affairs in
common is only the means to the end, namely, our common
good. The object of government is not to make ends meet, to
square accounts, to keep alive. As Aristotle further says: "The
state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life
and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life. ,, We
can imagine a community managing all its common interests
simply for the sake of the bare needs of life. Many have as-
sumed that this is what the "army of discontent ,, wants. Ani-
mal comfort is declared to be the aim of these rebellious prole-
tarians. Well, supposing it were. They are hardly to be blamed
for demanding a living wage when they have it not. But that
is not the present point at issue. The fault of such criticism is
that it overlooks the most important function of government.
Democracy is by, and of, and, most of all, for the people. It is
common management of common interests for the common
good. This includes, of course, a guarantee of comfortable ex-
istence, but besides it means far more than that. It means the
actual provision of the means of enjoyment. At present our
whole theory of government is built on the idea the less of it
the better, laissez faire laissez passez, let the people alone to
find their own fun, to pursue happiness one by one, to enjoy
life each sitting under his own vine and fig tree. This is per-
fectly consistent with the idea that all government is interfer-
ence and tyranny, which has been true enough. But nowadays
people must enjoy life together. They cannot get away from
each other. The closer and closer linking together of the in-
dustrial web makes them play together as well as work togeth-
er. Recreation is a joint affair. In a democracy nobody can
mind his own business. Men enjoy most what they do in com-
mon. A government that was truly for the people would take
positive steps to provide for the satisfaction of our fun-loving
instincts. The principle of making positive provision for public
happiness is acknowledged in the public park, and bath-house,
and library, and art gallery. Consistency demands that this
provision be adequate. But however remote and Utopian any
governmental functions of this sort on a large scale may seem
to be, the securing of good and livable conditions for work is
quite within sight and in active demand. For recreation is
only a small part of life. It would be no solution of the social
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THE IMPLICATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 208
problem even if the people should provide endless amusement
for themselves. No conceivable abundance of opportunities
for play could constitute a "good life^ if the hours of work were
still hours of drudgery. With all the joy gone out of his daily
work, all the amusements in creation cannot make a man hap-
py. This will be the great duty of the coming democracy, to
make men happy in their work. This no tyranny can ever do,
and it is the severest indictment to be brought against the tyr-
anny of private capitalism that it makes men hate their daily
work. Why should they not hate it under present conditions,
slaves to hours, slaves to machines, slaves to the market, mak-
ing an infinitesimal part of a product whose whole they may
never see nor enjoy, making things not to use but to sell, the
joy of creation gone, no longer artists nor even artisans, but
only wage- workers and "hands" — no wonder that men hate their
work and shirk it all they can. Not one word would I say
against the triumphs of modern machinery or against the com-
binations of capital. It is not machinery nor trusts which have
spoiled the pleasure of work; it is the system under which the
machine and the trust are used and the man is worked. The
man no longer works; he is worked. If such degradation were
necessary in the use of machinery, far better, as Ruskin says,
would it be to cast all our machines to the bottom of the sea
and make all we need by manual labor. But production by
machinery does not involve slavery. The fault is the lack of
democracy, industrial democracy, in which the producers are
the masters, common encouragement for the common good.
Under right conditions there is a pleasure in work, such pleas-
ure as cannot be equaled, and when the people do their work
not for the profits to be got out of it, but for the good use to be
got out of what they make, then life can be well spent at work
and at play. When the people produce wealth for themselves to
use, they will not only produce it well, but produce it with joy
to the maker and the user. William H. Noyes.
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THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
A series of events running through several years and leading
up to a climax within the last few months have served to bring
the "negro question" prominently before the public. The suc-
cession of terrible outrages committed in the Southern states —
the burning and torturing of defenseless negroes, often inno-
cent, and always without form of trial — have attracted universal
atterltion. The horrible barbarities accompanying these scenes
— the slow roasting alive of human beings, the tearing to pieces
of the still quivering bodies and the distribution of portions of
them among the mob as "souvenirs" — all this bore witness to the
fact that capitalism had developed within itself a body of demons
more ferocious than African head-hunters or prehistoric savages.
Perhaps the feature of these horrors that impressed the ordi-
nary observer trained to capitalist methods of thought was that
throughout the portion of the country in which these ghastly
orgies took place the so-called "respectable" or bourgeois ele-
ment of -society, who are supposed to be the especial conserva-
tors of "morality" and "law and order/' apologized for, excused
or openly encouraged such acts. Still further, at the same time
that these outrages were being inflicted upon a helpless people
these same bourgeois pillars of society were conspiring to take
away their only means of legal defense — the ballot. Apparently
more remarkable still, although the votes thus destroyed were
almost wholly Republican, that party made no emphatic or sig-
nificant protest against such action. On the contrary, the last
few weeks have seen the beginning of a series of outbreaks
against the negroes in Northern cities, that for unreasoning,
brutal violence rival those that have gained so much notoriety
for the Southern states. New York, Brooklyn, and Akron, Ohio,
have been the seats of "race riots'' as ferocious as those of the
South, and it was apparently only the lack of opportunity that
prevented the perpetration of equally hideous barbarities. Here,
too, the "authorities" and "respectable citizens" lent open sym-
pathy, if not active assistance, to the perpetrators of the out-
rages. In New York city it was especially noted that the police
often lent assistance in the beating of the helpless negroes.
These are the phenomena with which we are confronted. It
now remains to find an explanation. To do this it will be neces-
sary to pass hastily in review the various phases that the "negro
problem" has assumed in American history.
During the pre-revolutionary period those who sought to live
204
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THE NEGRO PROBLEM 205
upon the labor of others found themselves confronted with the
problem which always arises in a new country where natural
opportunities are not yet wholly monopolized by a possessing,
employing class. Such opportunities being open to all and capa-
ble of utilization with simple individually-owned tools, everyone
can secure the full product of his labor in this crude form of pro-
duction, and there is no class whose members are compelled to
sell themselves to the owning class in order to live. This is the
situation at present in the S. African diamond fields, and the
Philippine Islands. In all of these cases it was found necessary to
introduce some form of chattel slavery until the natural oppor-
tunities could be sufficiently monopolized to make it impossible
for anyone possessing nothing but his labor power to exist with-
out selling himself into wage-slavery.
In America all attempts to reduce the Indians to slavery
having failed, recourse was had to Europe and white "indentured
servants" and negro slaves were imported. Owing to a variety
of circumstances, such as the long Winters, an increasingly in-
tensive system of agriculture, a more concentrated population,
hemmed in by natural features and hostile Indian tribes, and
the growth of a trading class, there soon arose in the North a
body of men who were compelled to sell themselves into wage-
slavery while at the same time life ownership of the slave be-
came unprofitable.
Under these circumstances chattel slavery became "immoral"
and the New England Puritans "freed their slaves," and thus
avoided the burden of their support at unprofitable periods of
the year, while they well knew that monopolized opportunities
would keep them close at hand eager to sell themselves for a
limited period when needed. This left the highly moral New
Englander free to organize "abolition" societies and carry New
England rum to the Gold coast with which to buy the "black
ivory" so much in demand in the Southern states.
With the settling up of the great West the two systems came
into conflict, and, the Northern capitalist being in the ascendant
in Congress, cut off one source of supply to the slave market by
forbidding the further importation of chattel slaves. At the
same time he began in every possible way to encourage the
importation of wage-slaves for the Northern labor market. The
following table, giving the number of immigrants by ten-year
periods from 1821, will show the extent to which this form of
labor was imported:
Years. Number immigrants.
1821-1830 143439
1831-1840 599^25
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206 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
1841-1850 I,7I3>25I
1851-1860 2,598,214
1861-1870 2,314,824
1871-1880 2,812,191
1881-1890 5,246,613
Grand total, 1821-1890 15,427,657
Since that time the economic conditions here having become
practically identical with those of Europe, and there consequent-
ly being no particular incentive to the immigrant upon the one
hand to come, nor to the capitalist upon the other to encourage
his coming, immigration has fallen off considerably.
By the late 50s the two forms of labor in the United States
were in sharp conflict. Each owner was eager for new fields for
his slaves to exploit. The resulting struggle was a testimonial
to the wisdom of the Northern capitalist in choosing wage in
preference to chattel slavery, for he was able to inspire a portion
of his "hands" with "patriotism" and send them forth to fight
his battles, while those who remained at home to work for him
were immensely more profitable than the Southern chattel slaves.
At the close of the Civil War, when the victory was won the
conquerors wished to revel in the spoils of the conquered and
complete the humiliation of their fallen foe. As instruments to
that purpose they chose the former chattel slaves, and through
a series of constitutional amendments gave them full political
equality with their late owners. With the mock morality that
has ever marked all dealings with the helpless negro since the
time he was brought from Africa to "enjoy the blessings of a
Christian civilization'' this was nominally done for the protec-
tion of the former chattel slaves. But precious little good it has
done him up to the present time, and when he does show some
signs of using it for his own good it is promptly taken away.
In the "reconstruction period'' immediately following the war
the negro was but the helpless tool of the horde of Northern
^carpet-baggers" who rode upon his back through the prostrate,
defenseless South to a career of plunder and pillage that had
scarce been equaled since the days of Alaric or Atilla. And this
period, when the helpless blacks were but mute tools in the
hands of a new and more unscrupulous set of masters, is known
in history by the bitterly ironical name of the "period of negro
domination."
' With the passage of time the South too began to be capitalistic
and the interests of the ruling classes of the two sections, North
and South, became the same. Both desired submissive wage-
slaves. The troops were withdrawn from the South by Presi-
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
THE NEGRO PROBLEM 207
dent Hayes and the Southern employers were left to treat their
black wage-slaves as they chose. Steps were at once taken to
disenfranchise the negroes. At first this was accomplished by
the clumsy methods of intimidation and fraud. These were the
days of the Ku Klux Klan, the "tissue ballot" and the "shot-gun
campaign."
But shortly after this great industrial changes began to take
place in the South. The great superiority of wage over chattel
slavery from the point of view of the employer began to make
itself felt. Factories of all kinds sprang up throughout the
South. A quotation from the "Textile World'' of July, 1900,
will give some idea of one phase of this movement :
"The Southern group of states now operated 5,815429 spin-
dles and the Northern mills 15,242,554. In 1890 the South had
1,828,982 and the North 12,721,341. The actual increase in the
number of spindles in the South in ten years is 3,986,447, a gain
of 217 per cent. The actual increase in Northern states is 2,521,-
213, a gain of 19.8 per cent."
These figures and the movement they represent offer one
more proof of the fact that when slaves are bidding against one
another in the labor market for a job they are much more docile,
and profitable to the slave owner than when masters are bidding
against each other to secure possession of the slaves. They
will work harder to fit themselves for their masters' work and are
no expense to him save when actually engaged in production.
At first only white laborers were used in the new Southern in-
dustries. The "poor whites" and "crackers" who fought so val-
iantly from '6i to '65, that their rich neighbors might have the
right to own black laborers for life, are now pouring into the
cities to fight each other for the chance to sell their own bodies
and brains for such periods as they can make themselves profit-
able to their buyers. Unorganized, composed mostly of women
and children, helpless, untrained to resistance, with a low stand-
ard of life in a semi-tropical cliijiate, wages are soon forced down
to the subsistence point, hours lengthened to the limit of en-
durance, and abuses of all kinds multiplied until the terrible hor-
rors of the early days of the English factory system are almost
duplicated to-day in many a Georgia, Alabama or Mississippi
cotton factory.
But the black can live even cheaper than the white, and so
another phase is given to the "negro question." Says a writer
in the Forum for June, 1898;
"A notion is abroad in the South that the negro could not
work in the cotton mill. . . . But there is no rational ground
for this belief. Negroes now work day and night in the tobacco
factories and display marvelous dexterity and deftness in the
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
208 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIAL 1ST RE VIE W
use of their fingers. Of course unusual risks must attend the
first venture with dark labor in a cotton mill. All new mills
must employ some experienced hands to start with; and if a
manufacturer undertook to start with negro help he could not
bring in white laborers to teach them, owing to the unwillingness
of the whites to commingle with the other race. He would have
to start with all raw workers ; and if the business failed the fact
that negroes had lived in the tenement houses would render it
almost impossible to get decent white laborers to occupy them.
However, the ice will soon be broken. A mill in Charlestown
is already running with dark labor, and another is now building
at Concord, North Carolina, to be run exclusively by the same
kind of labor. If these experiments prove successful, then in-
deed will the South have a never-failing fountain of cheap labor."
These experiments have proven successful, as anyone who had
followed the course of capitalist development could have fore-
told from the beginning. Deficiency of education and incompe-
tency will not long prove serious obstacles. Lured on by the
will-o'-the-wisp hope of economic advance that has for these
many years sufficed to lure the white worker into the swamps of
capitalism, the negro is crowding into Tuskegee, Berea, Hamp-
ton, and a host of other "colleges'' and "training schools," where
he is fitted to better serve the purposes of his new capitalist
masters.
These developments have for the first time made the negro
an essential element of the capitalist system. The "negro ques-
tion" has completed its evolution into the "labor problem." This
at once made itself felt in two directions. Of one of these, the
introduction of the developed factory system into the South, we
have already spoken. The other was the use of the negro by
Northern capitalists to break the resistance of organized labor.
At Pana, Virden and the Chicago Packing Houses, and at vari-
ous other points, strikes of organized white labor have been fol-
lowed by the wholesale importation of negro "scabs." Their
presence added the fury of race prejudice to the natural hatred
of union and non-union men and was the occasion of bloody race
riots.
This race hatred was in itself a valuable thing for the capitalist
class. When the negro entered the field of modern industry as
a wage-slave his interests were for the first time in his history
completely identical with those of his fellow white laborers. It
was of the utmost importance to the laborers that the two races
should act together in harmonious, united resistance to the de-
mands of the employing owning class. But, as is always the
case, the class interests of the capitalists and laborers being dia-
metrically opposite, it was of the greatest importance to the ma-
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
THE NEGRO PROBLEM 209
terial interests of the capitalist class that this race hatred and
prejudice be fomented and increased in every manner possible.
Hence it is that whenever the two races are introduced to each
other in the course of capitalism, it is under conditions tending
in every way to embitter their natural hatred. The negro is
brought in as a scab at a time when passion is running high
against any who dares to betray the cause of labor, or else, as in
the Coeur d'Alene, he comes as a part of the regular army to act
as the tool of oppression and capitalist outrage upon his fellow
white worker. In the South there was little need of active en-
couragement of race hatred. It was only necessary to give nat-
ural savagery full sway whenever a negro was accused of any
crime and occasionally permit a few of the "best citizens" to
take part in a "negro hunt" with all its acompaniments of brutal
bestiality.
This fact that the material interests of the ruling class are in
accord with the excitation and continuance of race hatred ac-
counts for the comparative acquiescence by the Northern people
in outbreaks of savage ferocity throughout the South, which did
they occur in Turkey or China would at once be considered as
grounds for "armed intervention ,, on the part of capitalist gov-
ernment. The capitalist interests of the North and South are
now in accord with the prejudices of the old plantation owners
in opposition to "negro domination'' — as if the dice had ever
dominated the hand that threw them, or it was of any advantage
to the spades in a pack of cards to be used as trumps.
But if something is not done it will not be very long before the
negroes, who are now meeting the same problems, bearing the
same burdens and groaning beneath the same form of slavery
as their white fellow toilers, will begin to realize the fact of the
solidarity of interests which unites the workers of the world.
The history of the world has shown that no difference of race,
religion, color or politics is able to maintain itself permanently
against the terrible leveling influence of capitalism. Hence the
time cannot be far away when the white and black laborers of
the United States will join hands in their unions to resist eco-
nomic tyranny (indeed, the process is already well advanced),
and there are even signs that the time may be closer than we
think when the fact of the common economic interests will find
expression in common political action and a joint protest against
the entire capitalist system.
Under these circumstances every material interest of the rul-
ing class both North and South pointed to one course of action
— the excitation of race hatred, followed by disenfranchisement
of the negro before he could intelligently protest. Hence the
open encouragement or silent approval of negro lynchings, burn-
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
210 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
ings and torturings, the quiet acquiescence by the "authorities"
in negro riots in Northern cities, and, most significant of all, the
general acceptance of wholesale disenfranchisement of the black
laborers. Ten years ago any suggestion of such a disenfranchise-
ment on the part of the Democratic party would have been met
with a howl from every Republican spell-binder or editorial
scribbler from Maine to Oregon. To-day the party of Bryanism
can stand upon the proposition that "all governments derive
their just powers from the consent of the governed ,, and at the
same time take away from 500,000 American citizens all oppor-
tunity of protest or participation in the government beneath
which they must live, and the Republican party scarcely utters
a growl.
To anyone foolish enough to think that the Republican Party
really desires the enfranchisement of the negro it can be shown
that, on the contrary, it would much rather see William Jennings
Bryan elected to the Presidential chair than to in any way inter-
fere with the economic or political slavery of any portion of the
laboring class. Did they really desire to defeat Bryan or defend
the negro they could accomplish both at one stroke by wiping
34 electoral votes completely off the Bryan side of the slate.* The
Constitution provides that "when the right to vote at any elec-
tion ... is denied to any of the male members of such
6tate, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the Ignited
States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in re-
bellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall
•In the North American Review for 1899 complete figures of the extent of
disenfranchisement up to that time are given. The following table giving the
vote In three of the Southern states In 1876 and again in 1898 Is taken from this
article and shows to what extent both white and black laborers have been dis-
enfranchised.
VOTE OP 1876.
Republican. Democratic. Total.
Louisiana 75,315 70,508 145,823
Mississippi 52,705 112,143 164,848
South Carolina 92,981 91,540. 184,521
Totals 220,001 274,191 495,192
VOTE OF 1898.
Republican. Democratic. Total.
Louisiana 5,667 27,629 33.296
Mississippi 3,573 23,804 27,377
South Carolina 2,823 28.970 31,7£3
Totals 12,063 80,403 92,466
This Indicates a falling off during these 22 years In the Republican vote of
807,938 or over 94 per cent, and In the Democratic vote of 183,788 or 67 per cent
or a total falling off In votes of 401,826, or over 81 per cent. But this does not
tell the whole truth, as this has been a time of rapid growth In population In
these states especially since the new Industrial development. Says the writer
In the North American Review quoted above: "According to the census of 1890
there were 797,249 males of voting age In these three states, of whom 854,016
were whites and 403,233 were colored. The natural Increase from births and
Immigration must have brought the total up to 900.000 and the white voters to
about 400,000."
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
THE NEGRO PROBLEM 211
be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male
citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-
one years of age in such state."
But no step has been or will be taken to enforce this provision
because ever since the time when the Democratic party ceased to
be semi-feudalistic and became purely capitalistic, the two parties
have agreed to perfection upon the point of keeping the worker
in helpless subjection. When the "negro question" became the
"labor problem" both parties joined hands against the worker.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
TRUSTS AND SOCIALISM.
The vital point of the trust problem, which is at present en-
gaging the public mind, is thus formulated by President Had-
ley in Scribner's Magazine (November, 1899):
"Will such monopolies be long allowed to remain in the hands
of private corporations at all? Is it not rather true that this
consolidation is a step in the direction of state ownership of in-
dustrial enterprises? Is not a grave crisis at hand in which
there will be a decisive struggle between the forces of individ-
ualism and socialism V 9
The main difficulty in answering this question lies in the in-
definiteness of the conception of Socialism. There are to-day
in this country two or three distinct political parties, each
claiming to be the incarnation of scientific Socialism ; there are,
furthermore, the advocates of co-operative and colonization
schemes as methods for "ushering in" the "co-operative com-
monwealth ' 9 ; there are the Christian Socialists, and lastly, the
Anarchist Communists, also demanding recognition as a dis-
tinct school of Socialism. In view of this divergence of current
Socialist theories, one who seeks an answer to the question
raised by President Hadley must go back to the fountain-head
of modern Socialism, Karl Marx's "Capital'':
"As soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its
own feet," says Karl Marx, "then the further socialization of
labor and further transformation of land and other means of
production into socially exploited and therefore common means
of production, as well as the further expropriation of private
proprietors, take a new form. This expropriation is accom-
plished by the action of the imminent laws of capitalistic pro-
duction itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist,
always kills many."*
Thus to Marx, who has foretold the coming capitalistic evo-
lution, competition appears to be the only lever which sets it
in motion.
"The battle of competition is fought by the cheapening of
commodities; the cheapness of commodities depends, ceteris
paribus, on the productiveness of labor, and this again
on the scale of production. Therefore, the larger capitals
beat the smaller. The smaller capitals, therefore, crowd into
spheres of production which modern society has only sporadic-
ally or incompletely got hold of. Here competition rages in
•"Capital," by Karl Marx (New York: Humboldt Publishing Co.), p. 467.
212
Digitized by VjOOQIC
TRUSTS AND SOCIALISM 218
direct proportion with the numbers and inverse proportion to
the magnitude of the antagonistic capitals; it always ends in
the ruin of many capitalists, whose capitals partly get into the
hands of their conquerors, partly vanish."*
Marx does not attempt an analysis of competition itself. "It
is not our intention/' says he, "to consider here the way in
which the laws imminent in capitalist production manifest them-
selves in the movement of individual masses of capital, where
they assert themselves as coercive laws of competition.'^
The "coercive laws of competition" are to him the visible
form in which "the laws imminent in capitalist production" are
perceived by the capitalist. It does not seem to occur to him
that competition itself is but a transient phase in the develop-
ment of capitalism, or, to use his own phraseology, that the
"negation" (or elimination) of competition within the age of
capitalism marks the beginning of the process by which "capi-
talist . . . production begets its own negation."*
In the days of Karl Marx capitalism had not yet arrived at
that age of maturity when this new tendency of development
first begins to manifest itself. It was not before the early 8o's
that general attention was attracted by the attempt of capital-
ists to subordinate the elementary economic bellum omnium
contra omnes to the conscious control of combinations of capi-
talists.
The structural form of capitalistic combination has under-
gone a gradual process of evolution. On the lowest round in
the scale of evolution we find the manufacturers' association
which meets periodically with the object of arranging for an
uniform scale of prices for their products. This is the most
primitive form of capitalistic combination, in which there is,
strictly speaking, neither organization nor centralization; com-
petition and chaotic production continue as before. It goes
without saying that this form of organization exhibits utter lack
of stability.
A higher form of capitalistic combination, still with the prin-
ciple of competition unrestrained, is represented by the system
of equalization of profits. Unlimited freedom of action is re-
served by every manufacturer, but a fixed percentage of the
profits is divided among all the parties to the combination.
While this form of organization breeds a certain degree of
community of interests among the several enterpreneurs, still
both production as well as marketing are as yet regulated whol-
ly and exclusively by the individual capitalist.
•L. c, p. 894.
tl* c, p. 188.
tU e, p. 487.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
214 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
The first step towards actual regulation of production and
exchange is taken through the territorial division of the mar-
ket among the parties to the combine. These combinations
tend towards complete elimination of competition within each
district. The rise and permanency of such combinations are
largely dependent upon favorable geographical conditions. In
many cases a territorial division of the market is impracticable.
The same object is attained by the regulation of the output and
sale. The parties to the combination limit by mutual agreement
the output of each manufacturing concern; some factories are
shut down upon the payment of an indemnity or bonus to the
owners. It is here that we find for the first time social regula-
tion of the scale and, partly, of the methods of production and
marketing, the individuality of each concern remaining, how-
ever, intact. Competition is here temporarily in abeyance, as a
result of an understanding among the competitors, ever ready,
however, to revive upon the breakdown of the combination.
The potential form of competition is preserved in the contin-
ued individual connection of the producer with the market.
The highest form of combination of individual producers is
found in the joint selling agency. The independence of the sev-
eral producers is retained, but the marketing of the product is
entrusted to a joint agency which alone deals with the market.
Competition among the producers is here completely elimin-
ated. The methods and the scale of production, as well as the
prices, are regulated by mutual agreement. Production is
completely divorced from exchange. We have here a case of
centralization of exchange without centralization of production.
All these combinations of capitalists are embraced within the
colloquial meaning of the trust; none of them, however, is a
trust in the strict sense of the word. The distinctive feature of
the trust proper consists in that it embraces not only exchange,
but production as well. Competition is here entirely eliminated.
The several concerns continue in existence, yet merely as
branches of one centralized enterprise. The only trace of their
former independence can be discovered in the nominal corpo-
rate life of the component stock companies.
This legal survival was seized upon by the middle-class oppo-
nents of the Trust to secure the passage of a number of laws,
both state and federal, prohibiting or restricting all sorts of
combinations among corporations, designed for creating an in-
dustrial monopoly. Still, the anti-monopolistic agitators over-
looked the fact that the fire of their attack was directed not
against the substance of monopoly, but merely against its prim-
itive form, which had been devised by the first pioneers of
monopoly, as a concession to the proverbial conservatism of
Capital. The trust form appealed to the irresolute mind as an
Digitized by VjOOQIC
TRUSTS AND SOCIALISM 215
assurance of a retreat behind the old intrenchments of competi-
tion, should the experiment eventually prove a failure. But
when the cherished form brought on a conflict with the law, it
was cast off without hesitation. The trusts were reorganized.
The federation of corporations, the Trust proper, was replaced
by a sole centralized corporation which absorbed the property
of the former trusts. The name has stuck to the language as a
generic term for every industrial monopoly. The legislative
and judicial war upon the trusts merely resulted in hastening
the process of centralization and the final disappearance of the
relics of individualism in centralized industry.
The extinction of competition has necessarily resulted in a
general rise of prices of all articles whose manufacture and
sale are controlled by monopoly. This does not mean, of course,
that there are no limits to the rise of prices under monopoly.
On the one hand a maximum of profits may be realized through
the increased consumption of a given merchandise stimulated
by reduced prices. The advocates of monopoly point to the
cheapening of kerosene oil and sugar within the last quarter of
a century and give credit for it to the oil trust and the sugar
trust. To this the opponents of trusts reply that, considering
the progress in technical methods within the same period, the
prices of those products would, under free competition, have
come down far lower. As can readily be seen, however, this
argument implies an admission that a gradual cheapening of
articles of merchandise is possible even under monopoly, owing
to the improvements in manufacturing processes. On the other
hand, the principal check upon the power of monopoly in regu-
lating market prices lurks in the potential competition of new
concerns. Extravagant prices invite new competitors, who at
times threaten the very existence of the trust. The time-hon-
ored "law*' of Political Economy, which declares that prices are
determined by the cost of production plus the mythical "aver-
age" profits, is displaced, with the advent of monopoly, by a
new standard — "what the traffic can bear/' This standard, how-
ever, as proven by experience, is very flexible. In August,
1899, the American Anti-Trust League directed an inquiry
among manufacturers and wholesalers in New York City, to
ascertain the influence of the trusts upon the prices of mer-
chandise. Not a single case of reduction of prices could be
ascertained; on the contrary, the prices of about 150 articles
were found to have gone up from 5 to 100 per cent.* Ample
proof can be gathered from other sources in confirmation of
this upward tendency of prices.
Monopoly prices again stimulate the formation of monopolies
•*»*• ABtl-9fiiBt Bnllttln, StpUmbftr, 180*.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
316 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
in new branches of industry. Who are directly affected by a
rise in the prices of merchandise ? The answer to this question
can be read in the table collated by Mr. Baker in the latest edi-
tion of his "Monopolies and the People" (pp. 270-275). In sum-
marizing Mr. Baker's figures we have classified all industries
under two heads: First, those ministering to personal con-
sumption, and second, those ministering to productive con-
sumption, i. e., those manufacturing the means of production.
The latter group includes iron and steel, machinery and hard-
ware, iron and steel products, metal and wood products, chem-
ical products, glass and clay manufactures, and electrical appa-
ratuses and supplies. This classification, of course, does not
aim at mathematical precision; so, e. g., twine, jute, bags, and
partly felt, belong rather into the second group, while glass and
metals, hardware and chemicals (salt) enter into personal con-
sumption as well. But these errors mutually balance each
other. The table follows:
Products classified. Number of industries. Capital invested.
I. Personal consumption 71 $1,740,362,800
II. Productive consumption (means
of production) 96 2,447,899,000
167 $4,188,261,800
As appears from this table, the inroads of Monopoly into the
sphere of manufacture of means of production, such as raw ma-
terials, half products, machinery and auxiliary matters (coal,
etc.), are considerably heavier than into the manufacture of arti-
cles of personal consumption. In other words, monopoly prices
materially affect manufacturers and tradesmen, as well as con-
sumers of sugar, meat, kerosene oil, etc. Whereas, however,
the latter are utterly defenseless, manufacturers and wholesalers
in those branches which are threatened by monopoly from
without, still find one road open to them, viz., an internal of-
fensive and defensive alliance, i. e., monopoly to fight monopoly.
Conversely, the organization of a monopoly in one branch of
production inevitably reacts upon the production of the raw
materials consumed by it. Being confronted with one sole
buyer, the monopolistic corporation, the scattered producers of
raw materials competing among themselves are compelled to
accept the prices dictated to them by the monopolistic corpora-
tion. The only remedy is a combination of one sort or another,
with a view to eliminating competition. Thus the elimination
of competition within every branch of production necessarily
leads to a conflict between the several industries mutually con-
nected as links in the chain of social division of labor. This
antagonism of private capitalistic interests finds its expression
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
TRUSTS AND SOCIALISM 217
in the tendency of every monopolistic concern to monopolize
the supply of the raw materials consumed by it.
The growth of monopoly in the extractive and manufactur-
ing industries again reacts upon the wholesale trade. "The
formation of trusts among the producers made the manufac-
turer more independent in his treatment of the jobbers, and
disposed him to cut their profits to the lowest point. Natur-
ally, these men combined to resist this encroachment on their
income. The point of greatest interest in this is the fact that
combinations among the first class of middle men are fostered
and made possible by the combination of producers. Nor does
the series necessarily end there. The increased price which the
retail dealers are obliged to pay for the goods . . . makes
them eager to do the same; and by the aid and co-operation of
the wholesale merchant they may be able to do much towards
checking the competition among themselves and increasing
their profits. Thus by the operation of the combination at the
fountain head, among the producers, there is a tendency to
check competition all along the line.''*
Monopoly prices bring fabulous dividends, which, in their
turn, become a potent factor in stimulating the monopolization
of wider and wider fields of industry and the further concentra-
tion of many monopolies in the same hands. A new problem
naturally arises, What shall be done with these hundreds of
millions of the annual accumulation of capital? Where there is
competition among capitalists, the ultimate aim of every cap-
italist is to eventually capture, if possible, the entire market;
this race after the buyer forces all capitalists to go on increas-
ing their investments. But the displacement of competition by
monopoly results in the adaptation of production to demand.
Herein lies the historical mission of industrial monopoly. The
dividends of a monopolistic concern can therefore not be rein-
vested in that very concern and must seek an investment else-
where. Thus monopoly must necessarily practice expansion.
Monopolization of production finds its natural complement
in the sphere of circulation of capital. As pointed out by Marx,
the increments of individual capitals are accumulated in the
shape of a reserve money fund,* which forms a potential money
capital.f The management of this reserve fund of capitalistic
society is the function of the banks. In the measure as the
places of many scattered capitalists are taken by one monopo-
listic corporation with a huge capital, the reserve money fund
accumulated by every such concern runs into the scores of mil-
♦Baker, L c, p. 75.
♦Capital, Vol. 2, pp. 65-59.
tli. c, p. 322.
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218 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
lions. It is a well known fact that the fabulous dividends accu-
mulated in the hands of monopolists have made them a ruling
power in banking. The banking trust, which controls all ave-
nues of capitalistic circulation, becomes the lord of the capital-
istic market fn general. A clear conception of this tendency
of modern industrial development is essential to a correct un-
derstanding of the evolution of capitalism. Karl Marx, in the
first volume of his "Capital/' elucidated the historical role of
capitalism in the process of production, which, according to
him, consists in the socialization of labor, brought about by the
development and improvement of the productive forces of so-
ciety. But the organizing role of capitalism in the creation of
a regulated system of social division of labor is scarcely hinted
at by Marx. There is an obvious reason for it: the very phe-
nomena had hardly any existence in his life-time. It may be
remembered that the first real trust, the Standard* Oil Trust,
was founded only one year after his death. In Marx's concep-
tion, capitalism is still inseparable from industrial anarchy. The
followers of Marx hailed the appearance of the Trust as a ful-
fillment of the prophecies of the master. That the trust, or
industrial monopoly, is a natural and necessary phase in the
development of capitalism, a phase which modern society "can
neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactment/'*
cannot be said to have received a clear recognition in the Marx-
ist Weltanschauung, f
To establish order in social economy in place of chaos, is,
according to the current socialist view, the problem of the
"class-conscious proletariat." The development of industrial
monopoly proves, on the contrary, that a regulated organiza-
tion of social economy (what Louis Blanc called l'organisation
du travail) is growing up gradually and spontaneously, as the
result of the unconscious historical activity of the capitalist
class.
Exception will be taken to this statement of the case of
monopoly, on the ground that it assumes precisely that which
must yet be proved, viz: that monopoly is a natural growth.
The suppression of foreign competition will be shown to be at
the bottom of many a monopoly in the home market. Like at
the dawn of the capitalistic era, when capitalist accumulation
was fostered by the paternal policy of the state, so in our own
days capitalism was given a start along the road of Monopoly,
by protection. All observers are agreed, however, that to-day
monopoly has already so fortified itself in some of the protected
•"Capital/' toI. I (Humboldt E<L), p. 12.
fTo Mr. Edward Bernstein Is due the credit of being the first amont Social-
ist writers to point It ont In his latest book, Die Voraussttstmftfi def BoeUlTs-
.mus und die Anfgaben der Soclal-demokratle (pp. T6-94).
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TRUSTS AND SOCIALISM 219
industries that it has no fear of foreign competition, being fully
able to take care of itself without protection.
A further objection will be raised by the adherents of the
American theory of "natural monopolies/' which upon closer
analysis will be found to be of a kindred origin with the fiat
theory of money. The tendency towards monopoly first found
its way into industries of a quasi-public character, such as rail-
ways, gas works, electric works, water works, and similar con-
cerns supplying public utilities. The common feature of all
such enterprises consists in that they rest upon a franchise or
upon the condemnation of private property. This has given
birth to the belief that they are exempted from the domain of
free competition by the authority of the law. The fact is that
the law itself does not hinder the operation of free competition
among the railways. Until but lately the law in this country
has regarded railways as ordinary industrial concerns, subject
to the general laws of competition. This view has found sup-
port in the fact, unknown to continental Europe, that railroad-
ing is here scattered among hundreds of corporations, which
leads to competition between parallel lines and eventually to
railroad wars. But the era of railroad competition was very
short-lived and soon yielded to consolidation. The history of
railroading has firmly established the familiar principle that
"where combination is possible, competition is impossible."
To judge by the latest information, the day is not far distant
when the entire railroad system of North America, including
the United States and Mexico, will be combined under one
management.
The transportation monopoly furnished the historical basis
for the creation and further development of the first monopo-
lies in mining and manufacturing. Early in the seventies the
railway companies directed their efforts to securing control of
the coal mines, until they now practically control 95 per cent
of the entire output of anthracite coal in the United States.*
Of still greater importance than this direct centralization of
property under the control of railway companies was the part
played by the railway tariffs in fostering centralization in other
branches of industry. The facts are too well known to bear
repetition. It is a genuine historical drama, with its heroes, its
villains, and the "people" in the background, with its psychol-
ogy, its stage sensations, and a climax in which the heroes fall,
true to their colors, and vice comes out triumphant, f
Can the work of history be undone? The trust-smasher
would answer this question in the affirmative. We quote the
•Von Halle, Trusts, p. 80.
tSee "Wealth ts. Commonwealth," by Henry D. Lloyd.
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230 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE IV
following from the testimony of Mr. M. L. Lockwood, Presi-
dent of the American Anti-Trust League, before the Industrial
Commission:
"I know the independent oil producers and refiners of
America, and I feel safe in saying that if you will re-establish
the equality of our people over the highways of the country,
that in less than fifteen years they will drive the Standard Oil
Company into a secondary position in the oil trade of the coun-
try. These great trust combinations do not know the first
principles of economic management. By virtue of the great
flow of wealth which has come to them from railway rebates
and monopolistic position, they have not been obliged to study
the principles of economy a moment in their lives. By this
monopoly process they have taken more money from the peo-
ple than they know what to do with.''
This optimistic view is not shared by the students of indus-
trial monopoly. According to Mr. Baker, the ultimate victory
of the trust is assured by the fact "that the trust can produce
and market its goods at substantially less expense than its small
competitors."* That this is so, the plaints of the hosts of travel-
ing salesmen, canvassers and middle-class men of all sorts, dis-
pensed with by the trust, bear ample testimony. Thus the
trust is to-day producing the same effect in the sphere of ex-
change, as did the machine earlier in the century in the domain
of production. Nor is this all. The centralization process,
beginning with organization of exchange, reacts upon produc-
tion as well. While most American writers confine themselves
to denunciation of the Standard Oil trust and Mr. John D.
Rockefeller, Mr. Paul de Rousiers calls attention to the pro-
gressive role of this Napoleon of modern industry. After
dwelling at length upon the improved methods of oil refining
introduced by the Standard Oil Company, the French author,
who otherwise takes rather an optimistic view of competition,
is forced to the following conclusion:
"One leaves the refinery fully convinced that the advantages
of production on a large scale are a crushing power. The trust,
having practically monopolized the transportation of crude oil
and being in possession of enormous capitals, was bound to
destroy by force the competition of independent refiners. The
monopoly which was created by the regime of competition has
retained control of the business of oil refining, however, owing
to the normal conditions of that industry."f
Aside, however, from the general advantages of production
on a large scale,which still remain a mooted question in econom-
•Baker, 1. c, p. 851.
fPaul de Rousiers, Les Industries Monopoliser aux Btats-Unls, pp. 61-66.
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TRUSTS AND SOCIALISM 221
ics, the consolidation of the ownership of all concerns within
any given industry is of itself productive of technical progress,
in that it alone assures to society the access to all the acquisi-
tions of applied science. Says an engineer and inventor in a
letter to Prof. Ely:
"When several firms owning different patents on the same
kinds of machines consolidate, all the improvements can be
combined in one fine machine, to the great advantage of all
concerned, the public included.'^
The elimination of competition is still in another way con-
ducive to economy of the productive forces of society, viz.,
through the substitution of conscious social control of demand
and supply for industrial anarchy. In the first place, it restores
the equilibrium between supply and demand, which is charac-
teristic of the early period of production of merchandise where
every producer manufactures for an easily ascertainable local
market. Monopoly removes the inherent wastefulness of the
competitive regime, which manifests itself in the overstocking
of the market with perishable goods, for which there is no
demand. In the second place, monopoly, to put an end to
chronic overproduction, proceeds by shutting up all superfluous
industrial establishments in every branch of production; as a
rule, it affects those factories which are the most backward in
regard to technical methods and equipment. It makes for
progress by cutting off the moribund vegetation of antiquated
methods of production.
There comes a time, however, when, to quote Marx, "the
monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of pro-
duction which has sprung up and flourished along with it, and
under it."*
"Political economy has demonstrated that under the regime
of free competition the men who control the production and
circulation of wealth have been forced, under penalty of seeing
their benefits vanish and their efforts go to waste, to be ever
striving for new improvements of every nature. It is a fact
amply established by experience that, under the regime of
liberty, progress is to an extent compulsory. The implanta-
tion in a certain industry of the system of combination tends to
make this conception disappear and we may say, to render
progress optional."!
This latent tendency towards technical stagnation must ulti-
tMonopolies and Trusts, by Richard T. Ely, pp. 148-149.
•'•Capital." toI. 1, p. 487. The term "monopoly" Is nsed by Marx In the col-
loquial sense of private appropriation, not in the specific sense of the term, as it
is applied in this paper.
fBssal enr lea ententes commerclales et Industrlelles, par Charles Broullhet
(Paris, 1805), pp. 88-80.
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222 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
mately prove fatal to industrial monopoly. The critical period
seems to have arrived in that most centralized branch of Ameri-
can industry, railroading. The proof of it is furnished in the
highly instructive paper by the well-known electrical engineer
and inventor, Prof. Short, on the substitution of electric power
for steam power in locomotion.* It hardly need be said that
such a change would be a great stride on the road of technical
progress. Suffice it to mention that the introduction of elec-
tricity as a motive power, would make it possible to travel at
a speed of 125 miles an hour, instead of the present rate of 40
miles. This means a complete revolution in the industrial
methods and mode of life of modern society. From an engi-
neer's point of view, there is nothing to prevent it. What then
is in the way? The answer is found in Prof. Short's article.
There are to-day about 36,000 locomotives on all the railways
of the United States, which, with the introduction of electric
motors, would have to be disposed of as junk. At an estimate
of $10,000 per locomotive it would result in a loss of over
$300,000,000 by the railway companies. The entire railway
system is under the control of a few railway combines; compe-
tition is out of the question, a duplication of the lines would
require an immense capital, which could be raised by no one
save the magnates of monopoly themselves. But the interests
of these magnates are so closely interwoven with the interests
of the railways, whose stock they largely control themselves,
that they could not be reasonably expected to favor a technical
improvement which would result in pecuniary losses to them-
selves. This shows to what degree the practical application
of modern improvements in railroad engineering is handicapped
by private ownership of the railways.
When "the material productive forces of society come in con-
flict with the . . . property relations under which they have
heretofore acted,"§ then the repeal of the antiquated legal in-
stitutions becomes but a question of time. The conflict is set-
tled by "the state . . . the concentrated and organized form of
society," which is always "the midwife of every old society
pregnant with a new one."t That that force (meaning the power
of the state) "is itself an economic factor"*, is amply evidenced
in this country, on the one hand, by the intimate connection
between the protective tariff and the trusts and on the other
hand, by the vast body of anti-trust laws enacted in the interest
•The • Coming Electric Railroad, by Prof. Sydney H. Short, Cosmopolitan.
January, 1900. v *
lOarl Marx, Zur Krltlk der Polltlachen Oekonomle, Preface.
ICarl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 470.
tlbld.
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TRUSTS AND SOCIALISM 225
of the small capitalist class represented both in congress and
in the state legislatures. The historical part played by railway
discrimination in the formation of the oldest commercial and
industrial monopolies in the United States, accounts for the
growing popularity of the demand for public ownership of the
railways. While the socialists either sympathize with this idea
in doctrinaire fashion, or oppose" it in likewise doctrinaire
fashion, to the American small capitalist it is a burning live
question: public ownership of the railways would put an end
to railway discrimination at the dictation of the trust, and
would, so they confidently hope, bring us back to the good old
times of free competition.
It must be understood that the conception of "small capital-
ist'' is of a relative value. A manufacturer whose business is
worth $150,000 and brings him a yearly return of from $30,000
to $45,000, i. e., from 20 per c^it to 30 per cent per annum,
would to-day be reckoned in Russia among large capitalists;
so he was considered thirty or forty years ago in the United
States. With the advent of the era of the Trust a capitalist of
this size succumbs under the onslaught of monopoly.* But
this class does not surrender without battle. It is composed of
men who have played the part of organizors and leaders in the
industrial life of this country. These men have trained their
fighting abilities in the school of competition. Conquered in
the economic battle, they transfer their energies into the field
of politics, having set to themselves the task to obtain posses-
sion of the machinery of state for the advancement of their own
economic interests, precisely as it has heretofore furthered the
interests of monopoly. They know how to create public opinion.
They have with them the press, which is driven by its own in-
terests into the camp of the enemies of the trust. The paper
trust dictates the prices of paper; the telegraph trust controls
the monopoly of the news, and — last, not least — the develop-
ment of the trust threatens the very life blood of newspaper-
dom — the advertising column. Public ownership of "natural
monopolies" thus becomes the instinctive platform of the small
capitalist class. The ultimate triumph of this platform is as-
sured by the very institute of unwritten law which the oppon-
ents of the public ownership idea are wont to cite as the chief
obstacle in the way of its successful realization and operation —
by the spoils system. Public ownership of railways, telegraphs,
telephones and other public utilities is bright with the promise
of new political jobs by the hundred thousand. It is note-
worthy that Mr. Richard Croker, than whom there is no higher
authority in the art of practical politics, is reported to have ex-
•Hamrj D. Llojd, Wealth against Commonwealth, p. 52.
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224 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
pressed himself in favor of "Municipal Socialism." The business
interest of the politician fraternity warrants the prediction that
next in the order of social development of America will be public
ownership of public utilities, such as railways, telegraphs, tele-
phones, gas and electric lighting and similar equally important
items in the expenditure account of the commercial and indus-
trial class.
But the middle class mind no longer contents itself with the
one plank of public ownership of these so-called "natural monop-
olies." The rush towards monopoly in modern American in-
dustry has forced upon the middle-class thinkers the conclusion
that it is not a passing wave on the open seas of free competition,
but a complete industrial revolution. Says Mr. Baker, who ap-
pears to be in close touch with the industrial interests of the
country:
"We have now determined tftat the trusts are here to stay and
that, taken as a whole, they are bound to take from their present
competitors such part of their business as they choose. Mani-
festly, then, merely letting then alone will not result in their dis-
appearance, as has been claimed, neither can we rely on outside
competition to protect the public from the extortion of monop-
oly. What measures can we take, then, that will give to the pub-
lic the protection they have a right to demand? . . . Mod-
ern society, threatened by the extortion of the trusts in hundreds
of industries, has the key in its possession, which can render
every one of them harmless. Every one of them is a corporation,
an artificial person created by society and subject in every re-
spect to any restriction which society may impose."*
The author suggests certain measures of public supervision of
monopolistic corporations. The experience of the Interstate
Commerce Commission justifies him in his opinion that an effi-
cient supervision of monopolistic concerns from without is im-
possible. He therefore recommends the placing of government
directors upon the board of directors of every trust or other
monopolistic corporation, the affairs of each corporation thus to be
administered by the directors elected by the stockholders jointly
with these government directors. It is not the form, of course,
but the underlying principle of this suggestion that is essential.
Following the current expression of public opinion, it takes no
prophet to foretell that state regulation of industrial monopolies
demanded by the anti-monopolistic section of the capitalist class
will find its way into national and state legislation. Mr. Baker
himself believes "that this proposition is not so radical as it might
seem/'f And this will be seconded both by the advocates of
•Baker, 1. c, p.
tli. c, p. 359.
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TRUSTS AND SOCIALISM 225
state regulation of monopolies, as well as by the communicants
of dogmatic Marxism in this country and in Europe. The
writer of this paper believes it, on the contrary, to be the start-
ing point of a transformation in the structure of society.
"The transformation of capitalistic private property into.,
socialized property'' assumes before the vision of the author of
"Capital" the outlines of a violent revolution. "Centralization of
the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach
a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist in-
tegument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of pri-
vate capitalist property sounds. The expropriators are expro-
priated." It is "the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass
of the people.^f That this conception sounds a discordant note
in Karl Marx's theory of economic evolution, has been pointed
out by Mr. Bernstein in his well known book, which has so much
stirred tip the minds of the German Social Democracy.^ If the
real basis of society is its economic structure, while legal and
political institutions and all other forms of manifestation of the
social mind are but "super-structures;" if "it is not the conscious
mind of man that determines the form of his being, but quite the
reverse"* then it would follow that capitalistic society must grow
into socialism as the outcome of the free play of economic forces,
without the intervention of the conscious social mind, as em-
bodied in the socialist party platform. Political revolutions are
but incidents in the development of society; they may forcibly
register the changes which have already been accomplished in
the constitution of society, they are not endowed, however, with
creative power.
A restrospective view of the development of legal institutions
within the half century which has elapsed since those principles
were first promulgated in the famous Communist Manifesto by
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, will prove their ideas to be
completely obsolete. Following up Mr. Baker's line of argu-
ment, we shall discover that capitalism has long since crossed
the danger line which separates private property from public
ownership. It occurred when the corporate form of industrial
concerns first came into being-. Corporations were first called
into life by the necessities of large industrial enterprises, such as
railroads, telegraphs, etc., which required the investment of
enormous capitals, far in excess of the means of the individual
capitalist of those days. Later on other advantages came in,
such as the limitation of liability which contributed to the exten-
sion of the corporate form to such enterprises where it was not
necessitated by the amount of the requisite investment. On the
•Karl Marx, Zur Kriti k der Polltiachen Oekonomle, Preface.
tL. c, pp. 487-488.
XL. c, pp. 27-86, 87, 189.
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226 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
other hand, kowever, the corporate form has its disadvantages
unknown to the individual concern or the ordinary partnership,
viz. : a great deal of red tape and a certain degree of state super-
vision. It is for this reason that up to the present day along side
with the stock corporation, individual concerns and ordinary
partnerships have held their ground. It is the quantitative
moment that tells here. The technical development of every in-
dustry prescribes a certain minimum of investment. It is utterly
immaterial for the success of the business whether this capital be
invested by a single individual, or a stock company; in fact, the
entire stock company may be concentrated in the hands of two
or three individuals, and oftentimes of one single person. While
thus under the rule of free competition, the corporate form is not
essential, with an industrial monopoly, on the contrary the cor-
porate form becomes mandatory, the essential point being here
the unification of all private capitals interested in a given branch
of industry. But what is a corporation? "A body politic/' ac-
cording to Blackstone, a quasi-public institution; its very exist-
ence depends upon the sanction of the state, its powers are strict-
ly limited by a charter, in one form or another granted by the
state, all its operations are subject to the supervision of the state.
The scope and form of this supervision varies with time and
place, but no one disputes the prerogative of the state to exer-
cise supervision over corporations. So long as the principle of
free competition was in full operation, the state in this country
pursued the same policy of laissez-faire both towards corpora-
tions and individual capitalists. Says Mr. Baker: "So long as I
can supply my necessities as well at one store as at its rivals on
the next corner, nobody wants the government to interefere with
private business. But when a great combination of capital ob- .
tains control of some necessity of life or of comfort and gives the
people the choice of buying at the price it sets, or going without,
then its character as a private business has disappeared."*
This view is supported by the authority of the United States
Supreme Court which has held that "when a business becomes a
practical monopoly it is subject to regulation by the legislative
power." (Budd v. New York, 143 U. S. 345.)
It is noteworthy that even Mr. John D. Rockefeller conceded
before the Industrial Commission the right of the government td
exercise supervision over monopolistic corporations, for the pro-
tection of the interests of the community as consumers.
From all these facts it may be inferred that the substitution of
monopoly for competition in determining market prices will force
the state to fall back upon the mediaeval system of regulating
•Baker, i. c., p. 359.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
TRUSTS AND SOCIALISM 237
the prices of commodities, precisely as to-day the prices of gas,
electricity, water, street railway fares, etc., are already regulated
by the legislature or the municipality. While thus regulating
prices in the interest of consumers, the state could not at the
same time ignore the interests of the stockholders and bondhold-
ers. This would make it incumbent upon the state to regulate
the rate of interest on the bonds and the rate of dividends on
the stock. In so doing the state would have to take notice of the
fact that the stocks of all monopolistic corporations represent
largely water, i. e., the capitalized profit derived from the unre-
stricted power of a monopoly to charge the public extortionate
prices. The state, by assuming to regulate prices in the inter-
est of the consumers, would necessarily be called upon to fix a
valuation upon the stocks and bonds, in conformity with the
estimated real value of the investment. On the other hand, given
the price of a commodity, the prices of raw materials and the
rate of profits (dividends and interest on the bonds), the rate of
wages is, eo ipso, determined. The state will thus be logically
led to regulate the scale of wages, which involves the question
of working hours, the salaries of higher grades of employees and
of directors, the compensation of inventors and patentees, etc.
In short, the mere regulation of the prices of monopoly products
by the state is seen gradually to deprive all industrial corpora-
tions of the character of private enterprises. The prerogative of
the stockholders are practically reduced to drawing an annuity
fixed by the state and voting at elections for directors entrusted
with the management of quasi-public institutions, under the di-
rect supervision of government officers. Fourier's dream of or-
ganization of social production with division of the product
among Capital, Labor and Talent, proves to be prophetic.
"Capitalistic production begets, with the inexorability of a law
of nature, its own negation."* Yet the conversion of private
capitalistic concerns into quasi-public institutions, subject to
state regulation, is accomplished, not by expropriation, but as
the outcome of the unconscious historical activities of the capi-
talist class itself. The principle of public control of monopolies
grows, not from the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and
the proletariat, but from the antagonism, inherent in ware-pro-
duction (Waaren production), between the producer and the
consumer. It is only in the measure as one branch of industry
after another is falling under state regulation that a conflict
matures between the capitalists, as a class, and the workingmen,
as a class, upon the issue of fixing the tallage levied upon society
by the modern "feudal corporations."f The rate of dividends
•"Capital," I. 487.
tThe expression is taken from an editorial of the Journal of Commerce,
March 22, 1899. quoted in Mr. Holt's paper, (The Rush to Industrial Monop-
oly, Review of Reviews, June, 1899).
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228 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
being in inverse ratio to the rate of wages, the laboring class
comes directly in conflict with the corporations. All such ques-
tions being regulated by the public power, the labor question
becomes a political issue, not merely in the scientific, but in the
colloquial sense, comprehensible to the "millions of bipeds" (as
Carlyle would have it), whose power of grasp does not extend
beyond dollars and cents and working hours. With the develop-
ment of culture among the working class, the demands of labor
will steadily grow, resulting in the gradual decrease of capital's
share in the social product.
Whether society will ultimately provide for a sinking fund,
with a view to a final liquidation of the claims of capital, is at
this hour mere scholastical speculation, affecting the form, not
the merits of the problem. The British Empire has given to
the world an example of a political democracy under a govern-
ment nominally monarchial. Modern political science can con-
ceive of a similar process of evolution in the working out of
Industrial Democracy. Marxist.
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PHILOSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM
There is a sound philosophy, a deep underlying stratum of
common sense and practical level-headedness, in the demand
for the territorial expansion of the United States, as formulated
in the platform of principles of our reigning political party,
which the working class of America totally fails to appreciate.
The demand for expansion is one of the most logical demands
of the century. There is a true force: properly speaking, there
is the impact of an idea, behind it.
It is no mere accident that the issue of imperialism has de-
veloped into the "paramount" issue of the present presidential
campaign. There is no fortuity in the circumstance that the
great Republican party of the United States stands towards the
new foreign policy of the nation in the relation of its avowed
champion and guardian.
In the very nature of things, as we shall see, this could not be
otherwise. The drift towards expansion is the necessary and
logical outcome of a chain of causes with which it would be use-
less to quarrel, and against which we are powerless to fight.
It is written in the inexorable decrees of fate that the United
States shall develop into a colonial power. The sufficient rea-
son for this assertion is what we shall endeavor to set forth in
this dissertation.
I.
To come to the root of the matter at once, the simple fact is,
that the industrial and commercial development of our country
has about reached a point, or is fast attaining the same, where
the field is a limited one for the profitable investment at home
of the surplus value or surplus products resulting from our high
organization of industry in recent years. On the one hand,
the profits from American industry are becoming «o vast; and
on the other hand, owing to the fact that our industries have
become equipped with virtually all the capital necessary for
their economical management, the increasing profits therefrom
are ceasing to be available for further investment in home in-
dustry. Consequently, in one way or another, the profits made
from our American push and enterprise within the United
States must find channels of investment outside the Union.
The great fact that stands out preeminently in the history and
statistics of our foreign commerce, is the steady and continuous
growth of our exports over our imports. Our volume of for-
eign commerce is growing in a phenomenal manner in every re-
spect. But the most superficial analysis of the exact informa-
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280 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
tion furnished by our bureau of statistics shows, that we are
certainly selling to foreign countries more goods, products and
commodities than we are buying from them in return. Year
in and year out, not only does the value of our international
sales exceed th£ value of our international purchases, but the
excess of one year is followed by a greater excess in the suc-
ceeding year.
For proof of these statements we cite the "Historical Table,"
a sheet publication of the Statistical Bureau, in which is lucidly
set forth the "total volume of imports and exports into and
from the United States, 1789 to 1900."
This table is so arranged as to show at a glance that during
the first eighty-five years of this period (1790 to 1875) our * m ""
ports all but continuously exceeded our exports. During each
of the latter twenty-five years, however, or from 1875 to now,
the reverse has practically been the case, our exports for this
period having all but continuously exceeded our imports.
During the last quarter of a century, moreover, whilst the
volume of our imports has been reasonably increasing, the
volume of our exports has been enormously increasing. In
other words, whilst our import trade continues to increase, our
export trade increases in a still greater proportion.
Thus, taking only the last four years, the excess of goods
sold by us to other nations over goods purchased by us from
the rest of the world, was in round numbers two billion dol-
lars, or exactly $1,996,042,334, made up as follows:
For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1897 $286,263,144
For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1898 615432,6761
For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1899 529,874,813
For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1900 544,471,701
This means, substantially, that the outcome of our interna-
tional trade for the last four years has been a loan of two bil-
lion dollars to the rest of the world. We have loaned to other
countries goods and commodities up to this value, or, as we
say in common parlance, money up to this amount. The
greater value of goods which we are sending abroad over what
we are receiving in return is not a free gift to the nations, but a
loan from the capitalist class of this country, and the same is
one of the strongest evidences of the wonderful capitalist pros-
perity which now obtains in the United States. During the ad-
ministration of President McKinley the world's net debt to our
capitalist class is a sum represented by the above amount.
These figures conclusively show how the Republican protec-
tive policy, and the fostering care of our present administration
towards the manufacturing and industrial interests of the coun-
try, has not only freed us from a position of dependence on
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PHILOSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM 231
European capital, but is rapidly placing the United States in
the front rank of the financial powers of the world.
Time was when this country looked upon Europe generally,
and the United Kingdom in particular, as the main source and
supply point from which was furnished the necessary capital
for the internal development of our growing republic. But we
have changed all this. Such time no longer is.
For a number of years past our financiers and capitalists have
been rapidly absorbing enormous quantities of American se-
curities held in England and Continental countries, a relic of
the time when the trend of capital was from without our coun-
try to within. The capital necessary for the construction of
our great railroads and western improvements being originally
supplied from this source, American railroad shares and bonds,
as also mortgage securities, were mainly held across the Atlan-
tic. But there is unmistakable evidence showing that foreign-
held American securities are becoming, to an hitherto unprece-
dented extent, the property of American investors. American
capitalists are coming to be the owners of these home invest-
ments, in place of English, French and German people of
wealth. In consequence of this marked tendency, as a market
for "American rails/' New York is continually increasing in
importance; whilst London and the Continental bourses are de-
clining.
Again, to consider this matter in the light of our own na-
tional obligations, or United States bonds. Not only are the
same at the present time virtually held exclusively by American
capitalists, but the obligations of foreign governments are be-
ginning to be extensively held by this class of the American
community. It is only a short time since we successfully
floated a Russian loan; and in the interval of writing I gather
from the daily press how, upon the British government adver-
tising its need of a loan, fifty million dollars worth of bonds
were instantly applied for by the capitalist class of America.
Fifty million dollars were immediately offered to the British
government by our own men of wealth.
All these facts go to show that we have emerged from that
stage in our national existence where the United States is to be
looked upon as a debtor country, as a borrowing nation. That
we have grown into a creditor country or lending nation is a
fact now firmly established beyond the possibility of conten-
tion.
In the phenomenal continuous increase in the value of our
exports over our imports we have the sure sign of the triumph-
ant march of the United States to a position, not merely of ab*
solute financial independence, but to a coign of vantage whick
must ere long place her on a level with, if not above, the pre-
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282 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
eminence up to the present enjoyed by the United Kingdom
of Great Britain in the realm of international finance and world
commerce. The trend of present conditions unquestionably
points to a time in the near future, when in place of the United
States of America seeking any financial aid from abroad, there
will be a general turning towards the capitalist class of this
commonwealth for assistance on the part of other nations, to
an extent hitherto unthought of.
Our surplus of manufactures and food stuffs, or the excess
of what the working class of the United States produce over
what they need, and which our capitalist class necessarily dis-
poses of to foreign nations, will find itself installed, in the shape
of the investment of American capital in every field of commer-
cial opportunity over the whole outside world.
The study of the statistics of our foreign trade brings out the
above facts more and more clearly. The figures show, not only
that the United States, even at the present time, occupies the
proud and enviable position of a creditor nation, but that we
are progressively becoming a greater creditor nation; that the
balance of trade is growing most rapidly in our favor year by
year; that the productions of our working class so greatly ex-
ceed the requisites for their subsistence, that the profit from
their industry which our capitalist class is thus rendered capable
of loaning to foreign nations is constantly on the increase.
The custom house reports and official statistics show beyond
cavil that instead of a stream of foreign capital flowing towards
the United States the tide is running the other way, which is
but to say that our country is so prosperous we have more than
a sufficiency of capital for home uses. Thus it comes around,
that a large proportion of the goods which we export, instead
of being paid for directly by the importation of other goods of
the same value, remain in foreign countries, being there trans-
muted into American capital, from which our capitalist class
will in the future receive a permanent revenue.
In brief, the United States is fast becoming a great capitalist
nation; one of the money loaning centers of the earth. Our
government, in pursuing its wise policies of the last four years,
has inaugurated an era of increasing prosperity for our capital-
ist class which is rapidly raising this Union of States to an inter-
national position of industrial, commercial and financial sover-
eignty. But granted, as in every likelihood seems probable, a
new lease of power to the Republican party, and the develop-
ment of capitalist prosperity within the next four years must
be even greater than that which has been witnessed under the
present administration.
In that time, too, in all probability, we shall more clearly see
than we do now, what is the real and inner meaning of our ex-
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PHILOSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM 288
ceptionally rapid advance. We are making history so fast; we
are forging precedents and changing conditions so swiftly, that
the ordinary man of affairs is unable to keep track of what is
really going on, or at any rate to form an adequate judgment
of what it all means.
In this paper we shall simply treat of one phase of this great
contemporary problem. What we propose to show is simply
this, that the increasing prosperity of our capitalist class is the
sufficient reason why expansion must continue a permanent
force, or is with us to stay.
Between the national prosperity, or rather the prosperity
of our great capitalists, and imperialism, there is a distinct
causal relation. Our capitalist class is prosperous to a degree
hitherto unheard of; therefore, imperialism is something which
must be. It is because our capitalists are making so much
profit from home industry that the UnitecT States is bound to
expand into a colonial power. With their profits increasing
at a greater ratio than the home field of investment can absorb
them, the capitalist class must be given an opportunity to in-
vest these profits abroad.
The development and elaboration of the position here as-
sumed forms the subject matter of our argument.
So far as I know, all our foremost writers and thinkers ap-
pear to have overlooked the elucidation of this simple cause
which is operating to bring about expansion, for the reason, as
it must be, that great minds neglect small things. My sense
of right and justice would fain see the case for imperialism
stated in the clearest terms, from this its strongest aspect. It
is only in lieu of some abler representative that I have under-
taken this self-imposed task.
II
In the preceding section we have seen that concurrent with
the increasing prosperity of our capitalist class our exports are
regularly far exceeding in volume our imports; that the trend
of capital is rather out of the country than into it; that from a
borrower of capital the United States has grown into a lender
of capital. This concatenation of facts constitutes the raison
d'etre of imperialism. An outlet must be found for the profit-
able investment of the increasing surplus value or profit con-
stantly accruing to our capitalist class from the energies of our
working class. We accordingly find that, within recent years,
the capitalist class of this country has been feeling its way, in-
stinctively rather than by conscious volition, for opportunities
to expand our territorial limits. Our men of affairs know that
in this way, provided we can only expand to a sufficient degree,
the profits which are currently being received from their invest-
ments within the Union, and which are becoming so great that
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384 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
it is no longer possible to reinvest them within such a restricted
area, as may continue to remain under our federal jurisdiction.
It is this instinctive sense of this class, the capitalist class,
or as we sometimes hear it called, the money class or money
power, that is the motive force behind the movement towards
imperialism, or the territorial expansion of our nation at the
present time. And what is more reasonable or natural than
that this should be so ?
Consider: For the span of a generation or more this coun-
try has been favored with an era of material prosperity, un-
exampled perhaps in the history of the human race. The last
thirty or forty years has marked an epoch in American history
in which American ingenuity has added invention to invention;
in which science has been advancing with rapid strides, and the
intelligence of our working class raised to a point which en-
ables us to compete successfully with all nations.
The beginning of this period marks the formation of a capi-
talist class, properly so called, in the United States. During
this period the newly born capitalist class has been accumulat-
ing enormous profits. It has been essentially an era of pros-
perity for this section of the community.
As fast as the capitalist class has made its profits it has
with a laudable patriotism reinvested them, at home for
the most part, nay, wholly so up to within a few years past, in
industrial and commercial enterprises which have contributed
to raise the American commonwealth from the position of an
agricultural state to the foremost rank among the manufactur-
ing and trading nations of the earth.
Up to the present time, practically, the profit made by the
capitalist class of the United States has remained at home.
The increase from capital has been devoted to the internal de-
velopment and improvement of our native country. This
money has been used to found American cities; to build ships
and factories; to help girdle our land with railway and tele-
graph systems; to open up our stores of hidden mineral wealth;
and, pre-eminently, to develop the natural resources of the
western states and territories. But, as any man of affairs, if
questioned, will admit, within the country itself, investment has
about gone as far as it safely may. In other words an outlet
must be found for the profit of our capitalist class. Therefore,
what more logical than that we should look abroad with a view
to acquiring, wherever the same may be possible, lands belong-
ing to other peoples.
As might be reasonably expected, since the profit of the cap-
italist class is being continually reinvested in the form of new
capital, the revenue of this class is perennially increasing.
Profit of capital, instead of being consumed in elegance and
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PHILOSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM 285
leisure, as is for the most part the case in older and less pro-
gressive countries, is so utilized in the United States as to yield
more profit. In a word, with us interest of capital is diligently
compounded; the profit from capital is continually capitalized,
or reinvested in modes so as to be a further source of capital-
istic revenue. As a consequence, the capital of the American
capitalist class is continually growing in a ratio proportioned
to the increase which it yields; and the profit from their capital
continues to increase in a similar ratio.
Now, as a nation, we have about reached that point where it
is no longer possible, as has been the case hitherto, for this pro-
cess to continue. Confined to the United States, it is impos-
sible for the capitalist class to keep on reinvesting their surplus
of profits in the form of active capital, or in a manner which
will enable the working class to continuously produce for them
a further supply of revenue.
Hence arises the desire, nay more than that, the inherent and
imperative necessity, of this class to invest, under the aegis of
American law, their already immense and progressively in-
creasing revenues in Porto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines and the
Orient. Should such be possible, the profit which they can no
longer turn into capital in the United States, may be utilized
to this end in these backward, unprogressive, undeveloped and
uncivilized countries. Thus, instead of the process of profit-
making being interrupted, as it otherwise most certainly must
be to some extent, profit will keep on giving birth to profit.
In place of the money of our capitalist class, which they pe-
riodically receive as a return from their investments, developing
into a barren factor, the same will continue the fertile progeni-
tor of money.
If the capitalist class of the United States, from now on, are
to be restricted in their industrial, commercial and financial
operations, to the territorial limits of their own country, it is
clear that the profit they are making must become a burden to
them. A burden, for the reason that they will be unable to re-
invest it.
To use a colloquialism, and looking at things, of course, from
the capitalist viewpoint, we are up against a condition of affairs
which reveals a clear case of expansion or "bust." To expand
or to bust, are the only two logical alternatives for our capital-
ist class, or the so-called money power of the country at the
present time.
Now, the money power being the dominant factor in Ameri-
can politics; our national policy and immediate future destiny,
at least, being in control of the class which holds this power,
there can be no doubt that its influence must be thrown in the
scale of its own material interests. Expansion, in consequence,
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236 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
is a foregone conclusion; a logical necessity based on the ma-
terial interests of our capitalist class, or the class which for the
time being rules over the American commonwealth.
To recapitulate: The capitalists of the United States,
since this country has reached its present stage of development,
must of necessity do one of two things. They must either find
new fields in which they may continue to reinvest the profits
they are regularly and periodically making from the working
class of their own country; or, failing in this, our capitalist class
must go bankrupt. Bankrupt in the sense that the profit they
are obtaining from their capital will be of no use to them, since
they can no longer reinvest it or transmute it into capital.
Bankrupt, for the reason, in the last analysis, that they will have
so much money they will not know what to do with the same.
Unless the United States becomes a colonial power, the most
distressing spectacle of the near future will be the sight of the
capitalists of this country resisting and struggling against
the mathematical necessity, or rather mathematical impossibil-
ity, of being compelled to eat up their own profits. Being no
longer able to capitalize their profits, or to transmute the same
into a perennial source of capitalistic revenue, the American
capitalist will stagger under the burden of an increasing accumu-
lation of profit, which will be to him as so much dead weight in
the handicap of life.
That this is the outcome to which the present trend of things
must carry them, our capitalists are beginning to recognize.
Though, to be sure, engrossed in the routine of business, they
cannot be expected to give their side of the argument formal
statement.
But since the issue is thus so vital; and since the capitalist
class is essentially the class which dominates in the present
social order — its economical antagonist, the working class, giv-
ing its support to two factional parties of the capitalist class,
and thus unwittingly obeying the dictates of this, its superior —
we may depend upon it that the recent acquisitions of territory,
which promise at least a temporary relief to the inconvenience
attending the growing volume of profit, will not be permitted
to recede from the nation's grasp.
From the time of its first settlement up to the present day,
practically speaking, the United States has been a country of
workers. If we omit the slaveholding aristocracy of the south,
there has in reality, at no period in the history of the nation,
existed a distinct leisure class; a class devoting themselves
mainly to the art of elegantly spending the revenues which they
were in receipt of from the exertion of others.
The capitalists of this country have not only been capitalists
per se, but also in part workingmen, laborers. They have, corn-
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PHILOSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM S37
bined the two functions of capitalist and laborer. At no time
have they consumed their revenues unproductively. They have
invariably preferred to invest their incomes. With the uner-
ring regularity of a true business instinct, the capitalist class
have capitalized their profits, in order that they might receive
further profits in the future.
As a consequence of this unparalled thrift, coupled with strict
fidelity to business, the capital of the country has so increased
that the return from capital is steadily diminishing. In place
of ten per cent, which at one period of our national existence
was no unusual return to investment, capital can now only with
difficulty obtain a net return of three or four per cent.
During the whole of this period of the diminishing rate of
profit, that is to say from the time of the colonization of our
country up to now, the profit obtained from capital has been
capitalized. Instead of being wrongfully, foolishly, and waste-
fully consumed, the profit has been saved and discreetly rein-
vested in judicious ventures, which have not only been a means
of furnishing employment to our working class, but have en-
abled this class to greatly increase the concrete results of their
productive efforts. The results of their production being thus
increased, and the needs of their subsistence not being neces-
sarily enhanced thereby, a larger surplus of the produce of la-
bor remained available for distribution as profit of capital. This
in its turn was again capitalized and a further revenue extracted
therefrom.
Now, in no country, and in the long run not even in the
world, can this process of the capitalization of the profits from
capital go on to infinity.
In any country, in any given stage of its industrial progres-
sion, and at any given stage of population, the amount of capi-
tal which can be employed in production is a finite quantity.
At any given time the volume of the means of production which
the working class can manipulate for the creation of wealth, for
the production of the wages of labor and the profit of capital,
is limited. The volume of capital which can at any time be
employed in a community is limited, first, by the extent of num-
bers of the community, and, second, by the stage of invention
and the industrial arts.
Thus, now that the United States contains a great popula-
tion, familiar with the railroad and telegraph and the use of
machinery in all branches of production, the means of produc-
tion which may be utilized for the creation of wealth are mani-
festly much greater than could be employed when population
was sparse, the most efficient means of transportation the stage
coach or freight wagon, and handicraft dominant in industry,
o Given a stationary stage of population and a stationary con-
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
288 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
dition of the arts, and let the capitalist class keep on capitalizing
the profits they obtain from their capital, and it is clear that in
a very short time a point will be attained whereat capital will
become redundant and the rate of increase from capital reduced
to a zero.
Granted, as for the sake of argument we may, that the United
States can employ more capital than she is now possessed of,
she could not employ indefinitely more. So, in ths same way
and by the same rule, grant an increasing rate of population
and a progressive stage of the industrial arts, and let the com-
pounding of profits continue. Then under these conditions
also, unless we suppose that population and science ever
advance in a greater proportion than the ratio of profit, capital
must become redundant and the rate of profit from capital de-
cline to a minimum.
Saving the exception, this latter condition represents the
stage of industrial and economic development which the United
States is entering upon in the closing years of the nineteenth
century.
Great as has been our progress in the technical sciences;
rapid as has been the advance in the population of our country,
both from birth and emigration, the growth of capital has kept
even pace with the same and more than even pace. So much
so, in fact, that to-day the bucket of capital in the United States
is not only full; it is overflowing.
Should the profits of the capitalist class continue to be cap-
italized then, or the interest of their capital compounded, the
capital of the country must come to exceed what the working
class of the country can utilize, even when the means of produc-
tion, furnished by the capitalist class, consist of the most expen-
sive machines and the costliest labor-saving devices. In brief,
should we keep on adding indefinitely to our capital, the same
must become so plentiful as to be useless, and so cease to yield
a return.
Whenever the capitalist class of any country reaches such an „
extremely dangerous stage of prosperity, there are two courses
for its members to pursue: (i) Spend their profits as they receive
them. Contemporaneously consume what the working class
contemporaneously produce for their benefit. (2) Send their
profits to some country where they can be capitalized or in-
vested in such a manner that they will continue to breed profit.
Fortunately or unfortunately, according to the standpoint
from which one looks at this problem, in the case of the United
States, the supposition of the capitalist class spending their
revenues is out of the question. The practical make-up of the
American capitalist presents an insuperable difficulty against
any such procedure as this. The average American man of
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PHILOSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM 289
wealth, as yet, is essentially an active business person. He is
a person of no culture. He has not yet grasped the conception
of traveling the journey of life easily, gracefully, and in an ele-
gantly idle manner. Much as his means may afford the luxury,
it is impossible from the constitution of his inherited and ac-
quired nature, for him to assume an attitude of unparalled ease
and regal dignity.
He must, therefore, continue in business, and manipulate the
profit he makes therefrom so that it may be transmuted into
capital, and yield a further supply of profit. Consequently, the
only consistent position for the capitalist class of this country
to assume is an attitude favorable to expansion.
As we have remarked in the preceding section, concurrent
with the social and material progression which the United
States has experienced from the earliest colonial days, there has
been evidenced a clear tendency for the rate of profit obtainable
from an investment of capital to decline.
No matter what may be the nature of the concrete form
which the investment assumes, capital invested in the United
States at the present time will no longer yield the old-time
eight, nine or ten per cent. The investor, if he desires security
with his investment at all, must in these present days needs be
satisfied with a modest three or four per cent. The fact is,
there is unlimited capital, seeking a safe and reasonably sure
channel of investment, at a less percentage of profit than these
low rates.
This same is a hard, absolute and incontrovertible fact, patent
to all men, and which no economist ought to attempt to get
away from, but rather to grapple with. It comes within the
province of the economist to explain, if he can, how it comes
about that with increasing social progress, the rate of interest,
or the percentage yield of profit obtainable from an investment
of capital, is on the decline.
Whether we view the phenomenon as a decline in the inter-
est rate of money loaned as money; or whether we consider this
fact in the light of the diminished rate obtainable when money
is invested in the form of concrete capital, or in the purchase
of industrial, railway or other securities, the problem is one and
the same. The tendency of the rate of profit to a minimum is
a clear and indisputable economic phenomenon which there is
no getting over. It cannot be denied by word or fact. Noth-
ing is to be gained by refusing to look the thing square in the
face.
From seven or eight per cent, which not many years ago was
easily obtained on first rate security in this country, and even
more than which could readily be secured from the generality
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240 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
of business enterprises, we have seen the rate of profit from
capital gradually decline to five or six per cent. From five or
six per cent there has been witnessed its steady decadence to
four per cent. From four per cent it has settled around three
per cent. From three per cent it must necessarily further de-
cline to two per cent. And from two per cent what is to stop
the rate of profit from capital declining to nothing at all. Log-
ically, in this way, the percentage yield of profit from capital
must be swept away altogether.
Considered in itself, or apart from all other distinctly observ-
able sociological tendencies of the time, this continuous fall in
the rate of profit obtainable from capital would seem to imply
a decrease in the revenue of the capitalist class, or a decline in
the volume of profit.
From a purely theoretical and isolated economic viewpoint,
it would appear that, through a decline in interest rates, there
is being made over to the working class the whole, and more
than the whole, of the pecuniary gains that come from civiliza-
tion and the adoption of improved productive processes. But
despite the logic of such a roseate view, the working class in-
sist, that in practice, through the operation of some mysterious
principle which they cannot explain, the true statement of the
case runs counter to this logical assumption.
Instead of the decline of the rate of profit from capital mean-
ing the advent of equality in economic and social conditions,
or the final absorption by the laborer of the total produce of
his labor, as it would seem that the same ought to mean, the
working class are beginning to feel that the reverse of this will
prove substantially to be the case. They are conscious of the
fact that, in some way they do not comprehend, with the decline
of the rate of interest is wrapped up increasing inequality, or
the steady growth in volume of capitalistic revenue. Interest
of capital may be falling, but the working class know that the
wages of labor are not rising.
The working man will admit that interest of capital has never
been so low in the history of the United States as at the present
time. He cannot get behind this fact. But at the same time,
he will point to and insist upon the recognition of this further
fact, which it is difficult to deny, that considered from the point
of view of its volume the profit of our capitalist class has never
been so great at any period in our history as a nation.
Interest of capital is falling. This is fact number one.
The income of the capitalist class is rising; this is fact num-
ber two.
This, then, is the condition of things with which we are now
confronted in the United States more clearly than in any other
country of the earth: (i) That the rate of interest, or the per-
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PHIL OSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM 241
centage of profit obtainable from capital is decreasing. (2)
That despite this fact, the amount of revenue which the capital-
its class receive as a return from their capital is increasing.
The rate of profit is falling. The volume of profit is rising.
With interest at three per cent the capitalist class are receiving
more profit than when interest was five or six per cent. When
the rate of profit goes down to two per cent they must, conse-
quently, make more profit still. And when to one per cent
they must do still better. But when the rate of interest gets
down to nothing at all, then, logically, must be the harvest
time of the capitalist. He will then be making the maximum of
profit. The time when the capitalist class seemingly get noth-
ing will be the time they will actually get all. But we are an-
ticipating the argument. This paradox of capital is not as yet
intelligible.
So to keep on the solid ground. Here are two absolute and
incontrovertible facts, which no man, whether he be a member
of the capitalist class or a member of the working class, can
get away from. While the rate of profit is falling, the actual
revenue of the capitalist is rising. These are two facts, in-
violable and irresistable, co-existing in our national develop-
ment. Since both arc truths there must be a relation of con-
gruity existing between them. What is the nature of this rela-
tion? Being truths they cannot be contradictions. They only
appear as such because there is a truth to be discovered, a prin-
ciple to be revealed, of which we are now ignorant. What is
this principle? What is the true explanation which will recon-
cile two such seemingly contradictory and discordant phenom-
ena? In a word, what is fact number three, which will har-
monize and correlate these two well-known facts?
If we compare the present actual selling value of our great
railways and our manufacturing plants ; of our steel and armor
plate works ; of our coal and iron and copper mines ; of our oil
wells and refineries, etc., etc., with their selling value of ten
years ago, we shall find that they have increased in actual value.
These same things sell for more now than heretofore. A per-
son who wishes to invest his money, either in the direct pur-
chase of these undertakings, or indirectly through the purchase
of their securities in the market, will have to pay more for the
whole or any part of them than some years ago. These con-
crete forms of capital, which investment must of necessity al-
most exclusively assume, have been steadily appreciating in
value. This is to say that the capitalization, selling value, or
actual cash worth of the means of producing wealth and trans-
porting commodities, is on the increase. A condition of things
which the trustification of industries must still further accent-
uate.
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348 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIKW
Of course, the means of production are doubtless increasing
of themselves, or in the sense of their quantities. But this is
beside the point. What I wish to bring out and elucidate is
the fact that their value, the price which is set upon them by
their owners, is increasing apart from this circumstance. There
are, for instance, better steel works, and more of them, at Pitts-
burg than a decade ago; the Standard Oil Company has more
oil wells and better refineries at the present time than it ever
had. But the value at which the same are now estimated, the
price at which their owners would be willing to sell the same,
is much greater than the quantitative increase in the things
actually possessed.
The increase in the capitalized value of our industrial plants,
of our transportation facilities, of our public service corpora-
tion investments, and the means of production generally, may
be due to a multiplicity of causes.
A portion of this increase may fairly be attributed to actual
and additional improvements which have cost labor or expense
to produce them. On the other hand, a portion of their in-
crease in value is clearly assignable to the elimination of com-
petition, resulting from the absorption or annihilation of busi-
ness rivals. Again, in many cases, the increment in capitalized
value has its rise in favorable special legislation, increased fran-
chise rights, and so on.
But whatever may be the causes operating to occasion the
same the fact remains that the means of producing wealth are
enhancing in value. The capitalization of our industries is cer-
tainly increasing; increasing, too, in a greater proportion than
the addition to their capital which may happen to be based on
cost of production; increasing, this is to say, in a greater ratio
than mere payments for actual improvements and visible ad-
ditions to the plants themselves.
Most unquestionably the capitalization of capital is increas-
ing. By increasing capitalization of capital is not implied any
reference to the idea of water.^ What is meant is, that taking
the present industrial community as a whole and as we find it,
the actual selling value or cash worth placed upon the means
of producing wealth (which means of production are capital, and
their ownership the source of profit obtained by the capitalist
class) has for some time been increasing, is now increasing, and
must in the nature of things continue to increase, as a result of
natural forces over which we have no control.
Concurrent with this increase in the capitalized value of capi-
tal, the percentage of profit from this increased capitalization is
decreasing. So here we have fact number three. The rate of
profit from capital is falling, and the volume of profit from capi-
tal is rising, or the income of the capitalist class increasing, be-
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
PHILOSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM 948
cause their lower percentage of profit is calculated on a higher
capitalization of their capital.
Let me give a few concrete illustrations of the practical work-
ing of this concrete principle:
We will go back a number of years to a time when the aver-
age rate of interest, or percentage of profit from capital in this
country was, say six per cent. Let us suppose a railroad at
this time to be making an annual profit of say $6,000,000. The
capitalized value of such a railroad at such a time would evi-
dently be $100,000,000.
Coming now to the time present, when -the rate of interest
has declined to say three per cent, let us suppose the annual
profit or net earnings of this road (the same road, in no ways
altered save in earning power) rises to $9,000,000. Now, in-
terest being three per cent, and the road earnings net $9,000,-
000 per year, the capitalized value of this road would therefore
be at the present time $300,000,000, or have increased three-
fold.
Again, to instance one of the great forms of capital — one of
the means of first importance necessary for the production of
wealth — land. Taking the land of the United States from Maine
to Puget Sound, and from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, its
capitalized value at the beginning of the century was not worth
consideration compared with its capitalization of to-day.
In this simple illustration we have all the three facts combined.
In this fall of the rate of profit from six to three per cent we
have fact number one. Then we have fact number two that the
profit of the capitalist class has at the same time advanced from
six to nine million dollars per year. Then fact number three,
consolidating and harmonizing these two facts, which is that the
capitalization of the road has spontaneously risen from one to
three hundred million dollars.
To give another illustration: The rate of profit, or interest
on his money, which a man can obtain from investing the same,
say in Standard Oil stock, is at the present time much less than
could have been obtained a few years ago. This is fact number
one; the general decline of interest, or the tendency of profits
to a minimum.
But the profit made by the Standard Oil Company has not di-
minished. A greater sum is now paid out in the form of divi-
dends than at any previous period. This is fact number two,
or the general fact that the income of the capitalist class is ris-
ing.
When we go in the market, however, we find Standard Oil
stock quoted at a high premium. It cannot be bought at its old
price. The three or four per cent which is the utmost that can
be obtained from an investment of capital in the securities of
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244 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
this corporation (or, in fact, any other) at the present time, is
calculated on a more than higher proportional capitalization
than the decrease in the interest rate. This is fact number
three, which explains why the income of the capitalist class is
rising despite the fact that the percentage income from money
is falling.
The above is virtually what is occurring over the whole field
of investment. All our railroads, telegraphs, tramways, public
service undertakings, industrial plants, etc., are appreciating in
capitalization. They are held by their owners, the capitalist
class, at a greater price than the price put upon them some
years ago.
(To be continued.)
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BOOK REVIEWS
Representative Democracy. By John R. Commons, New
York: Bureau of Economic Research, 35 Lafayette Place.
100 pages. Paper, 25 cents.
The name of John R. Commons, one of the few professors
who had the privilege of incurring the enmity of plutocracy and
as a result have had to forego the right to teach the younger
generations in the universities of the United States, more than
that of any other American economist deserves the attention of
the Socialist press. Though not a Socialist in the Marxian
sense, he touches elbows with us on frequent occasions, and un-
like most of his colleagues, has the courage of his convictions.
Some months ago Professor Commons stirred up the annual
meeting of the American Economic Association to a degree
quite unusual and unknown in the annals of that organization.
The occasion for that was furnished by the annual address of
President Hadley, who chose for his subject, "Economic
Theory and Political Morality." In dwelling upon the decay
of representative government, as observed in the modern boss
system of American politics, President Hadley advanced the
idea that the economist ought and was coming to occupy a
more conspicuous part in the councils of government, because
his training enabled him to embrace all sides of public questions
and see the whole truth without regard to the special interests
of particular classes.
Prof. Commons took issue with that view and in a lengthy
and comprehensive paper tore those arguments to shreds. In
concrete historical illustrations he brought out the never ceas-
ing class struggle and showed how all real progress came as a
result of that. He cited the example of Adam Smith, who in
his progressive (for this period) views voiced the struggle of the
rising capitalist class against aristocracy and concluded that
economists can have an influence in society not by acting as all-
wise counselors to those in power, but by identifying themselves
with those particular classes which in their opinion stood for
progress; only by taking part in the class struggle of the day
would the economist exert an influence in shaping the events
in his country. "As economists, I believe we would stand on
safer ground if, when our conclusions lead us to champion the
cause of a class, * * * * we should come squarely out and
admit that it is so." "The economist in working through so-
us
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
246 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
cial classes is working through the greatest of social forces.
Class struggles are a condition that make for progress, and
their absence indicates stagnation." Such were the utterances
that struck the keynote of his paper, and though from the stand-
point of a Marxian the principle was not consistently car-
ried out throughout the paper, the new philosophy was pro-
nounced enough to call down upon its author the rebuke of his
disagreeing colleagues. It is very significant, too, that not a
single one of those who took part in the discussion which fol-
lowed the reading of the paper, undertook to discuss it upon its
merits, but all limited themselves tc expressing displeasure with
the author's conclusions.
The book on "Representative Democracy" is an application
of the theory of the class struggle, as its author understands it,
to practical political questions of the day. As a plea for Pro-
portional Representation and the Referendum it differs favor-
ably from other works on the subject in that its author is fully
conscious of the limitations of the reforms he advocates, and
further, that he takes the right standpoint of treating them as
a necessary result of a natural evolution rather than as panaceas
invented and designed as a specific cure for a social ill.
Considering the subject matter in the book from that stand-
point, the most valuable and instructive chapters are Ch. II,
"Representation of Interests;" Ch. IV, "foirect Legislation —
the People's Veto;" and Ch. VI, "Proportional Representation
from an American Point of View."
In the first mentioned chapter we are given a sketch of the
evolution of the representative form of government in England,
from its origin in the middle ages to the modern party system
in the United States, and the evolution of political institutions
as a result of economic forces is brought out with admirable
clearness in very short space. It will repay reading by every
socialist and student of social questions.
In the chapter on "Direct Legislation" the author traces the
historical development of the referendum in Switzerland and
shows that it was introduced as a people's veto, a check on the
corrupt practices of politicians in office. As indicated in the
title of the chapter he sees the chief merit of the referendum not
so much In the positive results which it might accomplish, but
in the possibility of checking corruption, and in so far stands
head and shoulders above those who see in it the panacea for
all social ills. To quote the author: "The referendum is es-
sential only as a veto on unrepresentative law makers. Where
the legislature represents all the people instead of the bosses,
then the referendum, while retained as a safeguard, will grad-
ually drop into disuse." (p. 85).
Finally, Ch. VI, which has been prepared as a paper for the
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
BOOK RE VIE WS 247
International Congress of Comparative Law at the Paris Ex-
position, gives a concise account of the evolution of American
politics from the beginning of the Republic to the development
of party system and its modern outgrowth — the boss.
But while the chief merit of the book from a socialist stand-
point, lies in the method of treating the subject, it must be said
that the way in which it is carried out is far from perfection.
While adopting the standpoint of the class struggle, the author
is by no means imbued with the materialist philosophy, and as a
consequence contradictions and exaggerations are found here
and there throughout the chapters; this is also partly due to the
fact that the book has been written for a practical purpose rather
than as a treatise in the theory of politics.
Thus, the author evidently fails to see that the party is a
necessary organization in modern society which can not be
done away with by any such reforms as proportional represen-
tation or the referendum, when he says: "Boss politics is pos-
sible only because the boss is not compelled to make conces-
sions to any interests other than those of the 'organization' and
the campaign contributors. ,, He seems to underestimate the
influence of the latter element. The fact, however, is that both
the "organization/* i. e., the party and its boss are but the tools
of "the campaign contributors/' i. e., of the class whose interests
they are expected to represent and guard in the legislature.
While proportional representation would make it easier for the
smaller parties to gain a due influence on legislation, it would
not do away with the party system, and its logical result, the
boss, under the capitalist system. The interests which are best
preserved by and through the Republican party would continue
to contribute to the fund of the Republican party and of its
members both in and out of campaign times. Same would be
true of the Democratic party and the interests it represents.
The Social Democratic party, which has no boss, depends as
much on its "campaign contributors" as the capitalist parties.
Without the support of the working people, who furnish its
sinews of war, as well as its rank and file, it could not exist a
day. In other words, boss or no boss, proportional or "unpro-
portional" system of representation, the political parties of to-
day are no mere self-constituted and boss-controlled "organiza-
tions/' they are an organic part of our body politic, which can
not be removed by reforms in the method of voting; so long as
there are conflicting class interests they will assert themselves
in concerted action, whether we have a strict party system, as
to-day, or a "non-partisan" party organization, of the type sighed
after by such men as Mayor Jones. In fact, the opportunities
for bossism would be far superior without any party organiza-
tion than they are at present.
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248 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
An example of exaggeration, not wilful but due to enthusiasm
for the reform, is the statement on page 32 of the book to the
effect that "The Swiss people are free from the corrupting ex-
tremes of wealth and poverty because direct legislation headed
off encroachments of boodlers, etc. ,, It is a matter of common
knowledge that Switzerland has its millionaires and its poor,
its capitalists and proletarians, just as any other country,
though perhaps not in the same degree. It is due to the fact
that the capitalist system holds sway over the Swiss mountain-
eers as it does over the free and independent Yankees, with the
natural consequences of the "corrupting extremes of wealth and
poverty," which are not supposed to be there, thanks to the ref-
erendum system.
The chief practical aim of the author, to furnish "to the re-
form parties of the United States a method of united action in
state and local elections without fusion" (p. 7) can hardly be
achieved. His method is Proportional Representation. Under
such a system fusion before elections between parties would be
unnecessary, since every party, be it ever so small, would have
a practical chance to elect one or more of its candidates.
While that is true, and there is hardly a minority party that
would not like to see the principle adopted into law, the prob-
lem still remains, how to get this over the heads of the bosses
of the great political parties ; the answer which the author gives
us is that the minority parties ought to fuse for that purpose,
which brings us back to where he started from.
With all these limitations, however, the book remains the
most valuable contribution on the subject so far made in Amer-
ica and because of the sober spirit and proper attitude which
characterize it, as well as for the valuable information it fur-
nishes, ought to be read by every Socialist, the more so that the
question is one that will assume a practical importance for us
in the not very distant future.
N. I. Stone.
World Politics. Paul S. Reinsch, Citizen's Library of Econom-
ics, Politics, and Sociology. Macmillan & Co., pp. 366, cloth,
$1.25.
The appearance of this book is a sign that the new tendency
in American capitalism has reached the seclusion of the uni-
versity. As a usual, indeed an almost universal thing, when
Americans have written on this subject they have simply made
themselves ridiculous. Economic development had not yet fur-
nished them with the facts from which to reason inductively and
they were ignorant of any philosophy of society from which they
could accurately deduce conclusions. This volume is, however,
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
BOOK REVIEWS 349
the first sign of a new day. The author has not been extremely
pretentious and has confined himself to things whereof he
knows. In his opening chapter he traces the new development
in nations from nationalism to national imperialism and shows
the reappearance of Machiavellism in the field of world politics.
Attention is called to the fact that when representatives of the
various nations talk of a "universal peace" as at The Hague and
elsewhere what is usually meant is a sort of "pax Romana" in
which each nation hopes to play the part of Rome and be the
one to impose the peace upon the others.
In his general discussion of the new imperialist tendency he
points out very clearly the part played by missionaries in the
furthering of territorial advancement. "As the priority of ap-
pearance of a nation on unappropriated soil is of great import-
ance under the doctrine of preoccupation, the emissaries of re-
ligion who begin the civilizing process, are under the present
exaggerated conditions of competition, most valuable advance
pickets of national expansion." — pp. 33-4. "Never before, per-
haps, has so much material value been attached to ministers of
the Gospel in foreign lands, and the manner in which, after their
death, they are used to spread civilization is somewhat foreign
to our older ideas of the function of the bearers of spiritual
blessings." — p. 146. "The murder of a European missionary is
one of the most expensive indulgences the Chinaman can nowa-
days permit himself." — p. 147.
The chapters on Russia are particularly full of valuable infor-
mation that has been hitherto largely inaccessible to the English
reader. The course and direction of Russian expansion for the
past century is pointed out and attention called to her success
as a colonizing power, which the author largely accounts for on
the ground that her own semi-barbaric stage of social develop-
ment removes her to a less distance from the tribes she gov-
erns than the majority of modern nations.
Another chapter that "fills a long felt want'' at the very mo-
ment when the want is most intense is the one giving the facts
as to the relation of the powers in China just before the out-
break of the present trouble. Here is just the information that
is wanted concerning the terms of the concessions secured by
various governments and associations in China and the natural
resources which will be opened up by these and pending con-
cessions.
In his final chapter on the internal effects of a policy of ex-
pansion he points out the fact that when public interest is con-
centrated on foreign affairs it tends to strengthen the party in
power, increase the influence of the executive, and draw atten-
tion away from domestic problems. It is in this chapter,* how-
ever, that the one defect which runs all through the book is
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250 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
most apparent, and that is fche utter ignoring of the underlying
economic factor that determines the movements described. We
have been informed that this was done consciously in order that
this book might not overlap others in the same series but even
so it gives a sense of incompleteness to the reasoning which
might easily have been supplied without at the same time mak-
ing the book in any sense a treatise on economics.
The Emancipation of the Workers. Raphael Buck. Chas. H.
Kerr & Co. Paper, pp. 267. Fifty cents.
This is a work in which it is easy to find faults. The merest
tyro in socialist philosophy would find little difficulty in detect-
ing mistakes. A large portion of the argument is founded upon
a conception of Malthusianism more stringent than ever
dreamed of by Malthus and in the discussion of socialism he has
largely misunderstood the philosophy he criticizes. Yet, not-
withstanding all these faults the book has much of value and in-
terest and the author's clear style covers many defects in his
logic. His criticisms and analysis of present society are keen
and well-taken and much of his discussion of the land problem
is excellent. The fundamental difficulty with his scheme of so-
cial reform is that it is a scheme and society is not reformed by
schemes. The author has no conception of the necessary direc-
tion of social evolution and hence sees no reason why his
scheme should not have a trial.
The Impending Crisis. Basil Bouroff. Midway Press Commit-
tee, Chicago. Paper, 196 pp. Thirty-five cents.
The book consists largely of compilations of facts concern-
ing the distribution of wealth in America and as such will con-
stitute a valuable book of reference. These are summarized and
arranged in various forms to make them more vivid but there is
little that is new either in matter or manner of presentation.
The following books have also been received and such of
them as space admits will be reviewed in future numbers.
The Poverty of Philosophy, Karl Marx. Translated by H.
Quelch. The Twentieth Century Press, London. Cloth, 195.
2s. 6d.
The Trusts. William Miller Collier. Baker & Taylor Co.
Cloth, 338 pp. $1.25.
Socialism and the Labor Problem. Father T. McGrady, Bel-
levue, Ky. Published by the author. Paper, 44 pp. Ten cents.
Digitized by VjOOQIC
THE WORLD OF LABOR
The strike of anthracite miners in Pennsylvania, in which
150,000 workers (or at least half a million persons) were directly
affected when the order was given, is the result of a long train
of evils that would require volumes to enumerate. "No tongue
or pen can relate the horrible conditions in which those poor
wage-slaVes find themselves, ,, writes "Mother" Jones, the famous
woman agitator, who is now playing an important role in the
troublous district. "When I tell you that the hard coal diggers
are in a worse position than were the slaves and serfs genera-
tions ago you may believe it is the solemn truth. They are
ruthlessly robbed of the wealth they produce and then are
treated worse than the dogs and mules of this unhappy region,
seemingly because they do work their lives out, and even sacri-
fice their women and children upon the altar of capitalistic greed,
in order that their masters, the coal and railway barons, may
pile up untold millions for the glorification of plutocracy. The
men, according to the admission of the operators themselves,
average less than $240 a year. They demand a raise of wages —
ranging from 5 per cent to 20 per cent. They demand the pro-
hibition of child labor — the state law being openly defied by the
bosses. They demand the abolition of the 'truck stores' — an-
other law which is brazenly disregarded. They demand honest
weight of their product — being now compelled to mine 3400
pounds for a ton while the bosses sell 2,000 pounds as a ton.
They demand a reduction of the price of powder, for which they
are compelled to pay $2.50 for a can that costs the barons but
88 cents. They demand a modification of the dockage system,
through which the men are robbed of an additional 5 to 25 per
cent of coal mined. They demand a uniform price, where now
the foremen fix whatever prices they please. That the miners
shall have the right to select their own doctors, that favoritism
shall be prohibited, and that the semi-monthly pay law shall be
obeyed. There are many other grievances that need adjustment,
but I am afraid they would take up too much space in the Re-
view to enumerate. Your readers might secure a glimpse of
the conditions that obtain here by reading Dante's 'Inferno' and
every description of chattel slavery that they can get hold of
and then bunching them all together. The only solution for
this awful situation is the placing of a revolutionary political
party in power, at the head of which is such a champion of labor
as Eugene V. Debs. Long live the Social Democratic Party!"
Ml
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252 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
Among the many conventions that have met at Paris in the last
few weeks one of the most interesting was of the co-operatives.
Delegates were present from socialist co-operative societies of
Belgium, Italy, Spain, Holland, and some other countries.
The question of co-operative insurance received a great deal
of attention, while the most animating and eloquent speeches
were caused by the questions of how the profits of such co-
operative enterprises should be shared and to what extent such
enterprises do positive good for socialist propaganda. Most del-
egates urged that a large percentage of the profits of these co-
operative undertakings should go for socialist propaganda, and
it was argued that in Belgium and England these enterprises did
a great deal toward spreading the principles of international so-
cialism. One delegate expressed himself that he did not have
any faith in the practicability of political action. He was imme-
diately replied to by the well-known agitator, Anseele, who,
amidst the thundering applause of the delegates and visitors,
made a masterly speech and proved conclusively how even co-
operative enterprises could not have succeeded without the in-
direct support of the class-conscious proletariat, trained in the
political arena. Finally, a resolution was adopted in which the
co-operators are called upon to come in close contact with the
socialist organizations, and in which the members of the socialist
movement are called upon to participate in these co-operations.
A second resolution decided that only those co-operations that
will donate part of their profits in socialist propaganda shall be
admitted in the next congress.
For many years the railway brotherhoods have lobbied for the
enactment and enforcement of a law compelling the railroad cor-
porations to provide a safety car coupler. The companies appear
to be obeying the wishes of their employes with a vengeance.
They are not only employing safety devices to protect the lives
and limbs of their workers, but, according to reports from the
East, the corporations are making it unnecessary for at least one
branch of employes to further risk life and limb, or even to work.
The Philadelphia papers state that the Delaware & Hudson Rail-
way has introduced an automatic coupler and discharged 350
brakemen, as their services are no longer required. A St. Louis
dispatch says the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway will in-
troduce a telephone system along its route and discharge its
telegraphers and hire cheaper employes, probably girls. Still
another report has it that several roads are experimenting with
automatic devices to feed engines and displace firemen. There
is no doubt but the railway employes are "up against" the same
industrial development that concentrates effort in all other
branches of industry, and those workers will do well to give a
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THE WORLD OF LABOR 358
little study to economics and prepare to vote right, instead of
"throwing away" their ballots on capitalistic parties opposed to
their interests.
A new cigar-making machine has been invented in Germany
and is being introduced in some of the large factories. It is claimed
the device overcomes all difficulties in rolling and other tech-
nical objections. — Two Michigan miners are reported as having .
completed a new car coupler that is superior to all other similar
inventions. The device is guarded with considerable secrecy,
and therefore a description cannot be given as yet. — Electrical
machinery is now applied in the cutting of plug tobacco and roll-
ing cigarettes, and the output is described as being simply mar-
velous. — An electrical shoemaking machine has been put into a
New Jersey establishment, and a pair of shoes was turned out in
sixteen minutes from the moment that work was begun on the
raw material until the finished shoes were boxed ready for mar-
ket. — New York man invented a new stereotyping outfit, which
displaced three men in an ordinary plant, and work that required
thirty minutes to perform can now be done in ten minutes. —
Drop a nickel in the slot and you have your shoes shined by a
machine that is making its appearance in large hotels and at
railway stations. Think!
The Massachusetts textile workers are greatly disturbed be-
cause of the bringing out of a new revolutionary machine. It is a
rotary spinning ring, which, with a new application of compressed
air, will double the capacity of all the cotton, silk and woolen
mills of the world. The Haverhill Social Democrat declares that
the new device is "the greatest invention in spinning machinery
in one hundred years/' and "the new spinning ring will do in
eight hours what the old one does in sixteen hours. And it costs
about a cent." The Boston Times claims that "when the frame
is perfected to meet the great speed of the new ring, thread will
be spun probably four times faster than at present, quadrupling
the capacity of the mills." A $5,000,000 combine is handling the
invention, which will be leased to manufacturers, who are said to be
jumping at the chance of making one of their spindles do the
work of two. So it appears that large numbers of the poor,
underpaid and exploited textile workers will be given a long
vacation to study over the beauties of the capitalist system and
private ownership of the tools of production. It's high time that
the unions took up the discussion of the socialization of these
tools.
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EDITORIAL
Next to the platform the most authoritative expression of
the positions of the two great political parties are the letters
of acceptance written by the Presidential candidates. Both Mc-
Kinley and Bryan have written such letters during the past
month and a comparison is of interest.
We can afford to pass by their statements on money and im-
perialism as of no interest to the laboring class with which
Socialism chiefly concerns itself. As has been explained in these
columns, expansion is simply the natural results of the accumu-
lation of the surplus products of labor in the hands of the cap-
italist and while capitalism exists, expansion is inevitable. The
man or party who talks of opposing imperialism and expansion
without attacking capitalism is so manifestly insincere or ignor-
ant as to be unworthy of consideration.
Both felt themselves called upon to express opinions regard-
ing the trust question and the utterly meaningless character
of both declarations testify most eloquently to the height at-
tained by demagoguery in American politics. Mr. McKinley
declares that:
"Combinations of capital which control the market in com-
modities necessary to the general use of the people by suppres-
sing natural and ordinary competition, thus enhancing prices
to the general consumer, are^ obnoxious to the common law and
the public welfare. They are dangerous conspiracies against
the public good, and should be made the subject of prohibitory
or penal legislation."
Nevertheless he concludes that:
"Honest co-operation of capital is necessary to meet new
business conditions and extend our rapidly increasing foreign
trade, but conspiracies and combinations intended to restrict
business, create monopolies and control prices should be ef-
fectively restrained."
Mr. Bryan takes several hundred words to express the same
thing, for after a long play to the galleries describing the dire-
ful effects of these new industrial combinations he finally comes
to the conclusion that:
"The Democratic party makes no war upon honestly ac-
quired wealth; neither does it seek to embarrass corporations
engaged in legitimate business, but it does protest against cor-
porations entering politics and attempting to assume control of
the instrumentalities of government. A corporation is not Or-
854
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDITORIAL 265
ganized for political purposes and should be compelled to con-
fine itself to the business described in its charter ."
It is impossible to find any explanation of such phraseology
except that of demagoguery. It is too ridiculous, and Bryan
has shown himself too cunning in other lines to ascribe it to
ignorance or oversight. The first sentence, of course, is a bit
of bourgeois generality and assumes at once that wealth ac-
quired according to bourgeois legality and morality is sacred,
which once granted implies the whole competitive system, cor-
porations, trusts, monopolies and demagogic politicians. But
what does he mean about corporations entering politics. Does
he mean to imply that any corporation has ever had as one of
its lines of business the conduct of any branch of the govern-
ment? If not, that last sentence is pure bunco. What he is
trying to say is that corporations should not continue to use
their funds and influence to secure privileges. But this is done
in a thousand ways, not the least of which is the education of
such men as Mr. Bryan to deceive the laborers so that the great
privilege of private ownership, with its natural consequences
of wage-slavery and class rule may not be disturbed. Capital-
ist domination in no way hangs upon so slender a thread as the
direct participation of corporations in politics. So long as the
capitalist class (including both large and small without regard
to the "legitimacy" of their business) have control of all the
means of education, communication, dissemination of news, and
general control of "public opinion" it need not be concerned
about any attacks upon such crude methods of control as those
denounced by Mr. Bryan.
Both politicians pay special heed to the "labor vote." Mr.
McKinley says that "the best service that can be rendered to
labor is to afford it an opportunity for steady and remunerative
employment and give it every encouragement for advance-
ment." The old chattel slave owner formerly declared that the
best thing to be done for the negro was to "keep him busy,
feed, clothe and house him well, and once in a while make an
overseer out of one of them to encourage the others to work
harder." What more does McKinley offer? Indeed, when he
attempts to specify he merely elaborates a little further on the
old slave-owners' idea of a good master. "The wages of labor,"
he says, "should be adequate to keep the home in comfort, edu-
cate the children, and, with thrift and economy, lay something
by for the days of infirmity and old age." The chattel slave
did not have to worry about "infirmity and old age," but the
wage slave must practice economy for the day when he is no
longer of value to his master and is turned out to starve.
Bryan, again is more pretentious, and declares himself op-
posed to "government by injunction" and the black-list. But
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»56 rNTERNA TTONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
he forgets to mention that Democratic judges have vied with
Republican ones in the granting of injunctions, and he has no
suggestion as to how he is going to abolish the black-list and
retain the wage laborer. He advocates the establishment of a
court of arbitration, but while the government remains in the
hands of the capitalist class no intelligent laborer will vote to
hand over to them the adjudication of his differences with his
employer. Then follows another bit of demagoguery in the
advocacy of a "Department of Labor with a cabinet officer at its
head." It might not appear at first what good it would be to
the laboring class to have one more stool pigeon within the
ranks of capitalist government, but in his concluding sentence
we are informed that he would be "invaluable to the President,"
and anyone who has seen the way in which those labor leaders
who have accepted office under capitalism have been used will
fullv agree that such an officer would be invaluable to the
President to keep his political fences in order.
There are some things which neither side sees fit to mention.
While Bryan is filled with indignation at the action of the Re-
publicans in not at once giving the franchise to a few thousand
Filipinos and Porto Ricans, yet he is strangely silent concern-
ing the disenfranchisement of nearly a million American citi-
zens in the Southern states of this country, and while Mr. Mc-
Kinley spends several thousand words in explanation of the
conduct of the Republican party regarding the inhabitants of
the same islands, he never thinks to respond to his opponent's
attack by pointing out what the party of Bryanism has done at
home.
Again, while both letters are filled with denunciation or de-
fence of militarism abroad neither has anything to say about
militarism in the Cour d'Alene, where at the present time mar-
tial law still prevails, as it has prevailed for over a year, and
where no laborer can even ask for a job without first signing
away his rights as a man and promising never to unite with his
fellow laborers in resistance to economic oppression. The reas-
on for this is also not hard to see. These troops were sent to
Idaho by President McKinley and are maintained there at the
expense of the national government, but they were sent at the
request of the Democratic governor of that state and are kept
there by his orders, and this governor and his delegation were
received with cheers at the Kansas City convention that nom-
inated Bryan and are still supporting him.
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TH5 INTERNATIONAL
SOCIALIST REVIEW
Vol. I NOVEMBER, xooo No. 5
The International Socialist Congress
I HE fifth great international congress of Socialists was
held in Paris during the closing week of September.
The following account is made up from the reports
contained in the French and Belgian Socialist dailies
and the various weekly and monthly organs of France, Belgium
and Germany, with several private letters and the report of the
American delegates. It has been thought best to thus combine
and edit the material from all these sources so as to make one
connected narrative rather than to publish any one or several
of these accounts.
The opening day of the Congress was filled up largely with the
work of organization, which was somewhat delayed by a fac-
tional fight between the French Socialist parties. After this
had been settled and some speeches of congratulation had been
made the chairman recognized H. M. Hyndman, the well-known
English Socialist.
Hyndman, speaking in French, said that he thought that that
first meeting of the Congress ought not to close without an
expression of its profound sorrow and regret at the great loss
which the International Socialist movement had sustained by
the death of their great comrade and leader, Wilhelm Lieb-
knecht. (At the mention of Liebknecht's name the whole of the
delegates rose to their feet and remained standing till the close
of Hyndman's address, many evidently being deeply affected.)
Only a few short weeks ago they had all hoped to meet him
once more on this occasion. Now he was dead; and yet still
he lived with them, for the sentiments of that international
solidarity and unity for which he lived and struggled were alive
in their hearts to-day. He was the warrior of the revolution
who for 60 years had been engaged in struggles on behalf of
the working people of all countries. They mourned his loss,
but they gloried in the work he had done, and while expressing
to his widow their sense of the great loss they had sustained and
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*58 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
their sympathy with her in her bereavement, they could also
express their appreciation of his career and their confidence in
the ultimate success of the cause to which his life's work had
been given.
The vote of regret was carried with unanimity and in silence.
Speeches were made by a large number of representatives
from different countries generally along the line of urging the
union of Socialist forces in all countries.- The following from
the speech of Emile Vandervelde, of Belgium, while addressed
to the French Socialists, applies equally well to those of all
countries who have allowed themselves to be divided in the face
of the enemy:
Comrades we (the Belgians) are united, and this union is our only
strength. May I not hope that the union of the French party wiU soon
be realized? Socialists of France, unite! And in spite of appearances
socialist union is on the way with you. The obscure militants who do
not mix in the polemics of the schools desire union. Those who car-
ried the flag of revolution in 1793 also disagreed, but when the cannon
sounded they presented a solid front to the enemy. Socialists of 1900,
wiU you do less than the militants of 1798?
This statement was followed by a veritable ovation of en-
thusiasm and approval by the assembled delegates, which was
repeated when Troelstra (Holland) declared that "You French
comrades must unite. The enemy is upon you and you are
quarreling. It is the crime of lese-proletariat."
A letter was then read from Katayoma, editor of the "Socialist
World," of Japan, in which he asked that the Congress be told
that "in the extreme Orient he was working for the same cause
as the European comrades. He wished very much to come to
the International Congress, but poverty prevented." In read-
ing this Jaures (France) remarked that "it was. some consola-
tion to notice at the very moment when the extreme East had
become the theatre of war, the spirit of socialism was awaken-
ing there."
On the second day of the Congress the time was largely taken
up with the final verification of credentials and the organization
of the delegations from the various countries. It was then that
the attempt was made by one of the American delegates, rep-
resenting the DeLeon faction of the S. L. P., to prevent the
seating of the delegates of the S. D. P. This led to a discussion
of the anti-trade-union attitude of the DeLeonite faction and
finally to the complete endorsement of the attitude of the
Rochester and Indianapolis convention in this regard and the
seating of the delegates of the S. D. P.
The afternoon session was largely taken up with the reports
from the various countries. The following nations had delegates
present at the Congress: Belgium, Germany, Austria, Bo-
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INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS 259
hernia, Italy, Holland, Denmark, England, Russia, Poland,
Switzerland, Argentine Republic, Spain, Portugal, United States,
Sweden, Norway, Bulgaria, and Roumania. Later on in the
Congress delegates came from other countries, while telegrams
and reports were received from almost every land where capi-
talism has entered. The number 'of these delegations varied
from 1,083 * rom France, 96 from England, 57 from Germany,
43 from Belgium, and 20 from Austria to one or two from some
of the smaller and more distant countries. The Austrian and
English delegations would have been much larger had not both
of those nations been in the midst of general elections, which
demanded the energies of the party at home.
On the third day was taken what was perhaps the most im-
portant action of the Congress. This was the re-establishment
of an International Organization. It will be remembered by the
readers of the International Socialist Review that the establish-
ment of such an organization was advocated editorially in the
September number. The final completion of the matter and its
adoption by the Congress was in no small degree due to the
efforts of H. M. Hyndman, the English writer and orator, who
has long advocated such action. The following is a translation
of the resolutions in this regard finally adopted by the Con-
gress:
The International Socialist Congress at Paris considers—
That It is the duty of the International Congress, which is destined
to become the parliament of the proletariat, to take such resolutions as
will guide the proletariat in its struggle for freedom ;
That such resolutions, resulting from international relations, ought
to be translated into acts;
That the following measures should be taken:
1. A committee of organization to be named as quickly as possible
by the socialist organizations of the country where the Tiext Congress
will be held.
2. A permanent international committee having a delegate from each
country will be formed to have charge of the necessary funds. A re-
port from each nationality adhering to the Congress will be demanded
at the following Congress and will constitute a portion of the regular
order of business.
3. The committee shall choose a general salaried secretary, whose
duty it shall be to—
A.— Procure all necessary information.
B.— Write out an explanatory code of the resolutions taken at pre-
vious congresses.
C— To distribute reports upon the socialist movement In each coun-
try three months before the new congress.
D.— To prepare a general survey of the questions discussed by the
Congress.
E.— To publish from time to time brochures and manifestos upon ques-
tions of fact and general Interest, such as important reforms, and stud-
ies upon the more important political and economic subjects.
F.— -To take the necessary measures favoring the international organ'
ization of the workers of all countries.
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260 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
On motion of Hyndman the seat of the Congress was located
at the Maison du Peuple of Brussels. This was carried unani-
mously amid great enthusiasm. Vandervelde, of Belgium, then
rose and expressed the thanks of the Belgian comrades as
follows: "In the name of the Socialist Party of Belgium/' he
said, "I thank the Congress" for this proof of esteem and con-
fidence. The International has long been in our hearts, but for
the first time since the Congress of 1889 we are on the way to
see its practical realization. We will go from this Congress
with- the certainty that the ties of sympathy have become the
ties of organization, of action, of close relations, and I am sure
that we shall bring to the next Congress results worthy of
the grandeur of our resolutions. "
On motion of Furnemont, Belgian, it was decided not to elect
the national representatives to the international committee, but
to leave this to the action of the various national organizations.
At the suggestion of Van Kol, Holland, arrangements were
made for the organization of an international parliamentary
committee from those nations having Socialist representatives
in legislative bodies whose duty it should be to advise as to the
action to be taken by such representatives, with a view to insur-
ing uniformity in the legislative action of the Socialists of dif-
ferent countries.
On motion of Vandervelde the following resolution was
adopted without debate : "The International Secretary at Brus-
sels shall have the duty of collecting the international archives
of Socialism, and gathering together the books, documents and
reports concerning the labor movement in the different coun-
tries."
The Congress then took up the question of attempting to
establish a fninimum wage and after considerable discussion
passed a resolution to the effect that such an attempt could only
be successful when the workers were strongly organized and
that it must vary in each nation according to the prevailing
standard of life. Resolutions were also passed urging the ob-
servation of the first of May as a day of international demonstra-
tion. The committee upon the means to the freedom of the la-
boring class then offered the following resolutions:
The modern proletariat Is a necessary product of the capitalist regime
of production, which demands the political and economic exploitation
of labor by capital.
Its relief and its emancipation can only be realized by a struggle
against the defenders of the interests of capitalism which by its very
nature will lead inevitably to the socialization of the means of pro-
duction.
The proletariat, therefore, must array itself as a class fighting the
capitalist class.
Socialism, to which is given the task of transforming the proletariat
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INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST CONGRESS 261
into an army for the class struggle, has for its first duty to Introduce
into that class a consciousness of its interests and its strength and to
use for that purpose all the means which the existing social and polit-
ical situation puts into their hands or are suggested hy the higher con-
ceptions of justice.
Among these means the Congress would indicate political action,
universal suffrage, and organization of the laboring class into political
groups, unions, co-operatives, benefit societies, circles for art and edu-
cation, etc. It urges the militant socialists to propagate in all possible
manner all means of augmenting the strength of the laboring class and
rendering them capable of politically and economically expropriating
the bourgeoisie and socializing the means of production.
One of the American delegates, Job Harriman, here called the
attention of the Congress to the fact that in this country there
was an organization professedly Socialist which attacked the
economic organization of the workers and sought to disrupt the
unions. The resolution was then adopted by the Congress
unanimously.
During this session reports were received from Hungary, ex-
plaining that owing to the terrible poverty of the proletariat of
that country the Hungarian Socialist party would not be able to
contribute to the expense of the international organization ; from
Australia pointing out that the reign of capitalism and exploita-
tion was as brutal there as in older capitalist countries ; from the
Armenian Socialists conveying the sentiments of that stricken
nation to their fellow Socialists, and from several minor coun-
tries unable to send delegates.
On the next day the larger part of the time was taken up
with the discussion of the Millerand case, which, indeed, seems
to have been given much more attention as a whole than its
importance deserved. The result of nearly two days' discussion,
in which at times the French comrades seemed almost upon the
point of physical violence, was that a compromise resolution,
introduced by Kautsky, was adopted, which provided that a
Socialist might in case of an emergency take an office in a
Bourgeois ministry, but that it must be with the approval of
his party, and that he must leave the ministry whenever the
Socialist party to which he belongs should so decide. On the
question of political alliances it was pointed out in the debate
that these were only to be considered at times of extremest
peril or where a momentary struggle must be made for some
great end, as for example to secure the right of suffrage. The
resolution as finally adopted by a unanimous vote was a fol-
lows:
The Congress recognizes that the class struggle forbids all forms of
alliance, with any division whatsoever of the capitalist class.
It being admitted that exceptional circumstances may at times ren-
der coalitions necessary (cautiously and without confusion of pro-
gramme or tactics), yet the party ought to seek to reduce these coaU-
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W2 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
tione to a minimum, eventually to their complete elimination, only tol-
erating them as much as shall have been decided to be necessary by
the regional or national organization of the party concerned.
Resolutions were also adopted denouncing the policy of mili-
tarism and colonial expansion and advocating the organization
of the maritime laborers on an international scale. An inter-
esting portion of a resolution referring to universal suffrage is
that which declares that "considering that upon the ground of
Socialist politics men and women have equal rights, the Con-
gress proclaims the necessity of universal suffrage for both
sexes." After pointing out some things concerning the so-called
municipal socialism and suggesting lines of Socialist activity in
municipalities a report was submitted by the committee on the
trust problem, pointing out that these new forms of capitalist
organization were the natural outcome of the competitive sys-
tem and that they could only be controlled through socialization.
The question of the universal international strike was the last
matter acted upon by the Congress, and the following resolu-
tion was adopted:
This congress Is of the opinion that strikes and boycotts are the nec-
essary means to the accomplishment of the task of the laboring class,
but it sees no actual possibility of a universal International strike.
The step which is immediately necessary is the organization info
unions of the working masses, since upon the extension of such organ-
ization depends the extension of strikes in entire industries or in en-
tire countries.
After a short speech from Von Kol, assuring the Congress of
a welcome to Holland for the next meeting, which is to be held
at Amsterdam in 1903, the Congress adjourned to the singing
of the "International ."
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Karl Marx on the Money Question
(A Reply to Mr. Hitch)
|R. HITCH'S article in the first issue of the Inter-
national Socialist Review is a unique contribution to
socialist literature, and will, we hope, stand alone in
the future as a shining example of how socialists
ought not to write when they undertake the serious task "to
re-examine their position and admit that Marx made a mistake/'
Mr. Hitch hurls insults at the American socialists when he
says that to discuss the money question from a standpoint other
than the one accepted by Socialist science as it is formulated to-
day means to "stir up a good deal of bad blood," that "billings-
gate will flow freely where arguments are lacking/' and that he
will "be looked upon by our comrades * * * a repudiator
and an inflationist in the pay of silver mine owners." Knowing,
as he undoubtedly does, through what a painful and disagree-
able struggle the American socialists recently passed to estab-
lish the right of free discussion of socialist doctrines, his remark
is, to say the least, unwarranted. Had Mr. Hitch confined him-
self to a calm discussion of the question at issue without reflect-
ing upon the character of the men he calls his comrades, and
without the many flippant and irrelevant reflections upon the so-
briety and sanity of "comrade" Marx, he would spare his Social-
ist opponents the unpleasant task of administering to him a re-
buke which he had himself called forth, and all personal allu-
sions would be kept out as they should be in a theoretical dis-
cussion of this kind.
To come now to the subject matter. It has been an old cus-
tom, among writers, to quote verbatim an author's statements
whenever exception is taken to his views. If, for reason of lack
of space, such quotations are impossible and the writer has to
sum up the views of his opponent he is at least expected to give
references to the page of the work he is discussing so as to en-
able the reader to make his own comparisons, if he has the lei-
sure and desire to do so. Mr. Hitch does not consider that nec-
essary. With two or three exceptions he combats Marx not for
the opinions that he, Marx, expressly holds, but for what Marx
is supposed to believe according to Mr. Hitch's opinion. It is
an ungrateful task to discuss the money question with him, un-
der these circumstances, for instead of considering the respect-
ive views of Marx and Hitch on their merits, we have to show
what Marx did not say. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Hitch
is clear only about Marx's conclusions, but by no means about
us
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264 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
the principles on which the latter bases them, nor about the
connection between his views on money and his fundamental
theory of value.
Like Edward Bernstein in his recent famous book, "Die
Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus," Hitch starts out with the
task of correcting a mistake in Marx' theory which need by no
means lead in his opinion, to an overthrow of the theory as a
whole. Marx' mistake about money, he says, "is easily ac-
counted for, and in no way lessens the general value of his eco-
nomic and social teachings." (p. 30). But when he labors through
about three-fourths of his article he loses all patience with the
evasive "comrade*' Marx and accuses him of introducing the
distinction between price and value "to save yourself in a de-
bate ,, (p. 41-42). Now, if there is anything that Marx might
justly be proud of in his system of Political Economy, next to
his theory of surplus value, it is the sharp line he draws between
price and value ; you may agree with him in that and call your-
self a Marxist, or you may follow any one of the so-called mod-
ern schools like the Austrian, for example, in wiping out all dif-
ference between the conceptions of price and value, but what-
ever you do you have to be clear about it in your own mind. If
you think that there is no difference between the two, you dis-
agree with Marx from the start, and whether you are right or
wrong, you have no business to say that you are only introduc-
ing a correction in one of his theories. What you are really do-
ing is to throw overboard his whole theory of value, the corner-
stone of his economic science.
MARX* THEORY OF VALUE.
Stated briefly, what is Marx' theory of value and the theory of
money following from it ?
Under the system of division of labor and private ownership
of the means of production, all goods are produced, as a rule, by
individuals not for their own use, but in order to be exchanged
for other products which they need for their consumption. This
system of division of labor and exchange of commodities is re-
sorted to to obtain the greatest quantity of goods with the least
expenditure of labor and time. Whenever a producer of a cer-
tain kind of goods should find out that by manufacturing an ad-
ditional article he could get a certain quantity of that with less
labor and time than what he spends on his own goods which he
has to give away in exchange for that quantity he will imme-
diately give up exchange for production. To illustrate by an
example. Say a shoemaker makes eight pairs of shoes in a
week, which he exchanges for other products. Among these
products is a coat for which he has to give away in exchange
eight pairs of shoes, in other words, a week's labor. If the shoe-
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KARL MARX ON THE MONEY QUESTION 265
maker were to find out that it would take him only three days to
make his own coat, he would certainly refuse to exchange his
shoes for the coat and would rather devote three days of his
time to making the coat. Basing himself on this universal law
of human action under a system of private production and free
competition Marx framed his law (and he was not the first econ-
omist in doing so) of value, viz., that commodities are ex-
changed at their values., i. e., a product requiring the expendi-
ture of a certain amount of labor under a given system of pro-
duction will be exchanged for another product requiring the
same amount of labor under the same system production pre-
vailing in society, neither more nor less. So much for the gen-
eral law of value. But like all general laws, the law of value ex-
presses a condition which is true on the whole, but which is ul-
timately brought about only as a resultant of opposing forces.
Thus, in the exchange of commodities there are two sides with
conflicting interests. In the illustration cited by us, the shoe-
maker will try to give away as few shoes as possible and "get as
many coats in exchange as he can, while the tailor will act in
the opposite way. Therefore, if for any reason the tailor should
happen to have an advantage over the shoemaker, he will utilize
it to get from him more than four pairs of shoes (representing
three days' labor) for the coat, and on the other hand, should
he, by his excessive charges attract a number of other people to
the tailoring trade and thereby produce an excess of coats, the
advantage will lie on the shoemaker's side, who will now compel
the tailor to accept less than four pairs of shoes for the coat (or
less than the equivalent of the coat in labor time). The fluctuat-
ing terms on which the conflicting parties are thus concluding
their bargains constitute prices, or temporary value, as Mr.
Hitch prefers to call them. While these prices thus rarely coin-
cide with true value and as a rule are somewhat either above or
below the latter they do not in any way vitiate the law of value.
The use an oft-repeated analogy from Natural Science, the law of
gravitation states that all bodies when left in the air without sup-
port will fall toward the earth with a certain velocity. Yet, the
actual velocity of falling bodies is never equal to that formulated
by the law; it is sometimes greater and sometimes less. If, in-
stead of letting a stone drop, you will throw it down with some
force it will fall faster, if, on the other hand, you let it drop, but
it meets with a resisting force, such as the friction of the air or of
water, it will fall slower. Thus the actual rate of fall is never
equal to the theoretical rate as formulated by the law of gravita-
tion; yet, we have not heard so far of any scientist claiming that
the law of gravitation is an imposition upon the credulous, and
that the moment you point out to Newton the discrepancy be-
tween his theory and actual facts, he "saves himself in debate"
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266 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
by a recourse to artificial distinctions between the true rate of
fall and the temporary one.
MARX* THEORY OF MONEY.
The law of value as explained above deals with exchange of
commodities without the intervention of money. Money, how-
ever, appears at a later stage. Barter, or the direct exchange
of one commodity for another, is the first stage; the introduc-
tion of money follows it as a natural consequence of the growth
of trade, indispensable for trading facilities. The reasons for
its appearance have been so often described by economic writers
that it is unnecessary to dwell upon them here. One fact only
must be emphasized. Whenever and wherever money first ap-
pears it is usually in the form of some commodity, whose pro-
duction requires expenditure of time and labor just as much as
any other article of trade. It is never something that can be
easily picked up anywhere without trouble. Among a northern
people it may be skins of wild animals, among African tribes it
may be ivory, with others it may be leather, in American colo-
nies in the early days it was tobacco, at a more advanced stage
of civilization it may become some metal, such as iron, copper,
silver or gold, but whatever the country and the period, wher-
ever you find a generally acceptable article which you can ex-
change for anything else and which, in short, performs the func-
tion of money, that article is a product of labor, which is ex-
changeable subject to the general law of exchange governing
the exchange of all commodities not subject to monopoly, viz.,
the giving of value for value, as expressed in the amount of la-
bor required to produce the respective articles under the exist-
ing methods of production.
But, say the advocates of the quantity theory of money, would
not a relative scarcity of the article used as money result in rais-
ing its exchange value; as well as a relative abundance, in low-
ering its value? Of course it will, just as in the case of any other
commodity, and that is what constitutes the fluctuation of prices
about the true value we have spoken of above. But does that
mean "saving yourself in a debate" or playing with words ? Let
us see whether it docs.
According to Mr. Hitch, if all the coins in circulation were
"diminished in weight by one-half, but the coinage limited in
quantity to the same number of coins as previously existed, the
price level will remain the same, though the value of the gold
metal contained in the coins will be one-half the same as form-
erly." This is a frank, bold, logical reductio ad absurdum of the
fundamental principle of the quantity theory of money, accord-
ing to which money has no intrinsic value and is at all times fully
exchanged for all other articles. Not so, according to Marx. In
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KARL MARX ON THE MONEY QUESTION 267
the problematic case cited by Hitch, the producers of gold
would at first have an advantage over the rest of the people. It
would practically mean that every gold-mine owner (or silver-
mine owner, if the coins consisted of silver) could call half a
dollar's worth of gold one dollar, for the government would
stamp it to that effect at the mint. But while it is true that the
half-weight coin would be still called a dollar and everybody
would be bound to accept it as such, there is no law either in
Political Economy or on the statute book that could prevent the
owners of other goods to charge now two dollars for goods that
they sold previously at one dollar. The enormous profits of the
gold (or silver) producers would attract other capitalists to that
industry and the increased competition would soon bring about
a normal level of prices. Herein lies the significance of distin-
guishing between price and value. Whenever price differs from
value it is by its own motion bound to go to the other extreme
and bring about the equilibrium. In this respect it is like the
swinging of the pendulum, which keeps swinging now to the left,
and now to the right, constantly tending to come to rest midway
in a vertical position.
MARX* " ADMISSIONS."
Let us take up now the various points made by Mr. Hitch, and
his assumptions as to Marx, and examine them one by one.
On p. 31 Mr. Hitch enumerates five cases to which, he says,
"Marx admits that the quantity theory of money applies."
Among them are "times of great changes in the value of gold,
which generally occur on the discovery of new and productive
mines." No reference is given to any of Marx* works where
such an "admission'' by Marx is made. We are afraid that the
"admission" is a result of Mr. Hitch's failure to understand
Marx. Here is what Marx says on the subject, on page 160
of his Critique of Political Economy (Zur kritik der Politischen
Oekonomie Stuttgart, 1897. All citations from this work are
translated by the writer from that German edition, since the
work remains as yet untranslated into English):
"The purely economic causes of that change in value (of pre-
cious metals) * * * must be traced to the change in the
amount of labor time necessary for the production of these met-
als. The latter will depend upon their relative natural scarcity
as well as upon the greater or less difficulty with which they
can be found in a pure metallic condition." In other words,
Marx' "admission" amounts to this: with the discovery of new
productive mines it becomes possible to mine gold or silver
with a smaller expenditure of labor time than before; hence ac-
cording to Marx' law of value gold becomes cheaper. Does
that mean, Mr. Hitch, that it becomes cheaper on account of
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263 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
its greater quantity or on account of the decrease in labor time
necessary to produce it? You think it is the former, Marx
thinks it is the latter, but whether you are right, or Marx, why
should you make him "admit" the quantity theory, which he
never did?
Mr. Hitch will perhaps seize upon the word "scarcity'' in the
above quotation from Marx and see in that a disguised admis-
sion of Marx' part of the correctness of the quantity theory.
But Marx leaves no doubt as to the meaning he attaches to that
word. Scarcity will affect the value of the metals only in so far
as it causes a greater expenditure of labor time necessary to
obtain it, otherwise it will have no influence, whatever on the
value of an article. The point is so interesting in many other
respects that we shall quote Marx at length: "Gold is really
the first metal discovered by man. On the one hand, nature it-
self produces it in a native crystallic form, individualized, free
from chemical conbination with other substances, or as the al-
chemists would say in a virgin state; on the other hand, nature
takes upon itself the technological work in the large gold wash-
ings of rivers. Only the crudest work is thus required on the
part of man whether in winning gold from rivers or earth-de-
posits, whereas the production of silver presupposes mining
and relatively high technical development generally. In spite
of its lesser absolute scarcity the primitive value of silver is,
therefore, higher than that of gold. Strabo's assertion, that
among a certain tribe of Arabs ten pounds of gold were given
for one pound of iron, and two pounds of gold for one pound of
silver, seems in no way incredible. But, as the productive
powers of labor in society are developed and the product of
simple labor is therefore enhanced as over against -combined
labor, as the earth's crust is more thoroughly broken up and
the original superficial sources of gold supply are exhausted,
the value of silver will fall in proportion to the value of gold."
(Critique, p. 160-161).
It would be interesting, by the way, to have Mr. Hitch ex-
plain, according to his quantity theory, how the price and value
of silver were higher originally than those of gold, in spite of
the greater abundance of the former.
If Mr. Hitch objects to ancient testimony, Marx will accom-
modate him with a more modern example which will also show
that Mr. Hitch ascribed him opinions which he did not hold.
The rise of prices in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is
ascribed by the school of economists to which Mr. Hitch be-
longs, to the increase in the total quantity of gold and silver
following the discovery of new mines in America. Marx denies
that emphatically and ascribes the rise of prices to the fall
in value of gold and silver, i. e., to the fact that less labor was
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
KARL MARX ON THE MONEY QUESTIOA 269
required in the more productive mines in the New World than
had been the case before. (Critique, p. 169). He ridicules
Hume's quantity theory explanation (which Mr. Hitch would
have us believe, Marx accepted himself), and says: "That not
only the quantity of gold and silver increased in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, but that the cost of their production
diminished at the same time, Hume could see from the fact of
the closing of the European mines. ,, That is, if the fall in the
price of gold would be only temporary, due to its increased
production, there would be no necessity for closing the Euro-
pean mines in preference to the far off American mines. The
reason for doing so came only after the amount of labor time
necessary to extract the precious metals from the European
mines became greater than the "socially necessary labor," as
determined by the more productive American mines. So much
for one of Marx* "admissions."
Another "admission'' by Marx, of the correctness of the
quantity theory of money, is in the case of "full weight free
coinage gold money in gold producing countries, where the gold
is coined direct for the miners' account, without being first
bartered for commodities'' (Hitch, p. 31). Again, no reference
to any place in Marx' works is given to vouch for the assertion
and we are at a loss to understand where the "admission" was
obtained. As Mr. Hitch himself, however, "admits" that it is
only an impression of his, "at least this is as we understand
Marx," says he, we hardly need dwell on this any longer.
The fifth and last "admission" of Marx is in "cases where the
weight of the unit is changed." Again no reference, and again
we must deny the "admission/' as utterly at variance with
Marx' fundamental views on the subject. Marx devoted a whole
chapter in his "Critique'' entitled, "Theories of the Unit of
Measure of Money/' to show how erroneous were the views of
various economists who thought that the name attached to the
coin, and not the weight of the precious metal it contains, de-
termines the exchange value of money.
As to Marx' first two admissions, as to the applicability of the
quantity theory of money to fiat and partially fiat money, Mr.
Hitch is right, in a way; but fails to see the full import of the
"admission." Marx says that fiat money has value not because
of the government sanction of it, but only in so far as it is cov-
ered by gold or silver. If the paper money is covered by a
metallic reserve to its full extent, it will have a full face value.
Should it be increased, however, beyond the metallic reserve,
say, to twice the amount of the latter, its value will fall in pro-
portion. The fall in value of fiat money is therefore due pri-
marily not to its increase in quantity, but to the fact that it has
no intrinsic value outside of the value of the metal it stands for.
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970 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
Increase the metallic reserve in proportion as you increase the
issue of your fiat money and the latter will not fall in value. It
is enough to refer to our financial history during the Revolu-
tionary and Civil wars to prove the correctness of Marx* view;
we regret to be unable to comment upon these at length, for
lack of space.
Having disposed of Marx' "admissions/' we have practically
performed our task, except that we have not taken up, as yet,
Mr. Hitch's arguments. Let us take them up in their order.
On p. 32, Hitch opens his arguments as follows:
To decide whether a rise in the price level is due to a fall in
the value of gold as Marx claims, or to an increase in the quan-
tity of money, as we claim, it is only necessary to observe that,
if under free coinage the coins be diminished in weight by on*-
half and the same names retained, there would be a rise in the
price level, as Marx admits. If on the other hand, the coins be
diminished in weight by one-half, but the coinage limited in
quantity to the same number of coins as previously existed, the
price level will remain the same, though the value of the gold
metal contained in the coins will be one-half the same as form-
erly. This proves that the quantity of money, and not the value
of the metal in the coins determines the price level. This is to
Marx a stumbling block.
Poor Marx! Mr. Hitch undertakes to prove his claim, viz.,
that it is the quantity of money and not its intrinsic value as
metal, that determines its value. And how does he prove it?
By using a hypothetical case and saying that he has no doubt
that things would turn out as he wants them to. "This proves"
it, he triumphantly concludes, and proceeds to pity poor Marx,
who cannot see the point. But Marx and those who agree with
him claim that just the opposite effect would take place, viz.,
that prices would rise, and Mr. Hitch's "this proves" is insuf-
ficient to shake their belief. Instead of dealing in hypothetical
examples they point to concrete historical cases, when clipping
of coins, both open and surreptitious, invariably led to a fall in
their value and a consequent rise in prices, in spite of the fact
that the names of the coins remained unchanged. Thus, on p.
61 of his "Critique'' Marx tells us of the curious state of affairs
in England under William III, when the market price of silver
stood above the mint price, something just the opposite of what
we are experiencing now. An ounce of silver was divided into
62 parts, each part constituting one penny, twelve such parts
making up a shilling coin. According to that the mint price
of an ounce of silver was 5s. 2d. But when you went to buy an
ounce of silver in the open market you had to pay 6s. 3d. for it.
"How could the market price of an ounce of silver rise above
its mint price?" Marx asks, "when the mint price was but a
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
KARL MARX ON THE MONEY QUESTION 271
name for an aliquot part of an ounce of silver ?" The riddle was
easily solved. Of the £5,600,000 of silver money which were in
circulation at that time, four million were worn and clipped. It
appeared upon a trial that £57,000 in silver, which should have
weighed 220,000 ounces, weighed but 141,000 ounces." Thus
the value of the coin fell, in spite of the fact that the mint con-
tinued to coin the money according to the old standard. What
does it show? Simply this: that when you diminish the weight
of a metal coin, that coin being the standard money (and not a
mere subsidiary coin, when the law would not apply on the same
principle as in the case of fiat money, see above) it will lose
in value, no matter what name you attach to it.
MAEX' " ASSUMPTIONS.' '
"All of Marx* theories about money/' says Hitch on p. 33,
"are based on the assumption that the price level is always con-
stant." Again no quotation corroborates the assertion, and
again we must respectfully but most emphatically deny that.
Let Marx speak in his own behalf. "These three factors, state
of prices, quantity of circulating commodities, and velocity of
money currency, are all variable." (Capital, p. 61.) But Hitch
still insists: "Marx tells us frankly (?) that in his reasoning he
considers the value of gold as given, as fixed, which of course
(?l) implies that the price level is also fixed" (p. 33). Now we
are beginning to see why Marx is misunderstood by Mr. Hitch.
He cannot imagine any other cause for a change in prices but
a change in the price of gold. It evidently does not occur to
him that the absolute value of gold may remain the same, but
that owing to a change in the methods of production, such as
new inventions, new division of labor, or what not, prices of
various commodities may change and thereby affect the price
level. Thus we see that even if Marx had said that the value
of gold is fixed, Mr. Hitch would not be justified in his conclu-
sion that Marx considers the price level constant. One c6uld
hardly imagine a greater absurdity than that. One need not be
a Marx to know that the price level varies all the time.
But the whole assertion made by Mr. Hitch looks decidedly
like an attempt at humor when we turn to Marx and find that
he had not made any such assumption, even with regard to gold.
Here is what he says on p. 50 of his "Critique*': "To serve as
a measure of values, gold must be as far as possible a variable
value/' (underscored by Marx), and further: "Just as in deter-
mining the exchange value of every commodity in terms of
use value of another commodity, so in estimating the value of
all commodities in terms of gold it is only presupposed that
gold represents a given quantity of labor time at a given mo-
ment." Is it possible that the assumption of the fixedness of
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
27'3 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
the value of gold at a given moment (perfectly justifiable in all
discussions) has led Mr. Hitch to his assertion? But then how
did he understand this passage in the "Critique" (p. 50) which
immediately follows the above: "As far as changes in its (of
gold) value are concerned, they are subject to the law of ex-
change value worked out above. If the exchange value of com-
modities remains constant, a general rise of their gold prices
is possible only in case of a fall in the exchange value of gold.
If, on the other hand, the exchange value of gold remains con-
stant, then a general rise of gold prices is possible only in case
of a rise of the exchange values of all the commodities. The
opposite causes are at work in the case of a general sinking of
prices of commodities, etc." So much for Marx' views and what
Mr. Hitch tries to make out of them. No wonder he can dis-
miss Marx after that with a contemptible sneer: "This is the
sum and substance of thirty-five pages of financial philosophy
in Capital, and one hundred and fifty-six pages in Critique. The
mountain labored and brought forth a mouse' " (p. 34). The
mistakes displayed by our author on several pages following
are due to this fundamental misconception of Marx, and are
filled to a great extent with the same sort of cheap ridicule of
one of the greatest minds this century has produced.
On p. 36 we are treated to another "assumption" of Marx,
viz., "that a country requires a certain quantity of money to cir-
culate its commodities, no more and no less." That is true only
in a limited sense. Again, we are not given a word of Marx'
own statement as corroboration of the "assumption." If Mr.
Hitch had thought of the quotation from Marx which he him-
self gives on page 30 of his article, he would read there the fol-
lowing:
"The law that the quantity of the circulating medium is deter-
mined by the sum of the prices of the commodities circulating
and the average velocity of currency may also be stated as fol-
lows: Given the sum of the values of commodities and the aver-
age rapidity of their metamorphoses, the quantity of precious
metal current as money depends on the value of that precious
metal."
But we have already seen that Marx does not think that the
value of precious metals is constant; consequently the quantity
of the metal current as money cannot be constant. Further-
more, when Marx says: "Given the sum o\ the values of com-
modities," etc., it requires an extraordinary logic to interpret
that he assumes that the sum of these values is constant; thus,
there is not a single element among the factors which according
to Marx determines the quantity of money in a country, that is
constant. What Marx did say was that at any given time the
existing prices and the rapidity of circulation of money as well
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KARL MARX ON THE MONEY QUESTION 278
as all the other devices for substituting money, such as checks,
bank clearings, etc., determines the amount of money necessary
for the country.
We now come to a new "assumption'' of Marx (p. 38), viz.,
"that all the gold in a country does not enter into circulation/'
Mr. Hitch thinks that "this is superficially true; but essentially
it is utterly false and misleading." "Let us pit Marx against
Marx," exclaims Hitch, on p. 41. Let us follow his example,
and pit Hitch against Hitch. Let us put side by side what Hitch
has to say on the subject on p. 38 and then on p. 41 :
"That all the gold In a country "The fact that gold coin and
does not enter Into circulation." bullion are Interconvertible does
"This Is superficially true; but es- not make them the same thing at
sentlally it is utterly false and the same time; when gold is
misleading." money it is not bullion, and when
<4 To say, therefore, that all the it is bullion or Is hoarded even in
gold in a country does not circu- the form of coin it is not money,
late as money is analogous to A product can not be money and
saying that all the products of a a commodity at the same time,
country do not circulate as com- Herein lies Marx's vital errors"
modities. This is superficially (sic!),
true. But in substance it is (Hitch, p. 41.)
false." }
(Hitch, p. 38.) ;.-'i
Does it lie in disagreeing with Mr. Hitch on p. 38 and agree-
ing on p. 41, or vice versa? We are waiting for enlightenment.
The contradictions in which Mr. Hitch entangles himself in the
following pages are in the main due to the two causes wer have
illustrated now in so many examples. First, that he ascribes to
Marx views and arguments which the latter never held or ad-
vanced. Second, that he is not clear in his own mind when he
believes a certain principle to be true and when not. It is not
necessary to consider all these contradictions at length. If all
that Mr. Hitch has to say on the following pages were true in
itself (which it is not) his case would not be won after all that
has been brought out here.
It is a pity, however, that he has not attempted to give some
positive proof of the correctness of his quantity theory and lim-
ited himself instead to mere criticism. Perhaps he would have
explained to us then why prices did not fall uniformly during
the depression which led to the silver craze of 1896, as they
should have done if his theory is true, that the cause of the fall
lay in the insufficiency of money and its consequent apprecia-
tion; and also why the recent rise of prices which reached its
climax last March or April was also devoid of any uniformity,
if we consider the prices of various articles. Mr. Hitch, finally,
gives up his cause when he says (p. 44), that universal mono-
metallism might be a good thing, but until that comes it is ad-
Digitized by VjOOQIC
874 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
vantageous to have the money of different countries interchange-
able at a fixed rate of exchange; for if it is a good thing, the
natural inference is that in order to attain it we should strive to
get the countries which are still on a bimetallic basis (and they
are the most backward countries, by the way, and therefore are
least involved in international exchange) to adopt monometal-
lism and not adopt the opposite course, as Mr. Hitch would
have it. And in the light of that it sounds rather theatrical and
affected when he adds: "And it appears to us inconsistent in the
monometallism who claims to be the friend of the working men
of the world, to ride rough shod over all those who do not
happen to live in gold using countries. ,,
Really, Mr. Hitch, if the workingmen who "do not happen to
live in gold using countries,'' were so vitally affected by the
monetary conditions as you seem to think, and if, furthermore,
your assertion would be true that "international parity of ex-
change, even without an international unit of account, but espe-
cially combined with such a unit, would be a most powerful
bond of union between the working men of all countries," don't
you think that they would have raised this question long ago
at the International Congresses to which they send their repre-
sentatives from time to time? And does it not rather tend to
justify the attitude of the American socialists who, in common
with the socialists of all the world, consider the whole financial
question but a matter of subordinate importance, not worth the
powder of socialists, who have far more momentous questions
before them to settle?
Were it not for the fact that Mr. Hitch's article appeared in
the International Socialist Review, and further, that because of
that, if unanswered, the impression might go abroad that it rep-
resented the sentiment of the American socialists, the writer,
for one, would not think it worth the trouble to go at this time
into a discussion of the question.
N. /. Stone.
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
Edward Carpenter and His Message
| HERE is no single feature in the literature of our
times that is more profoundly significant and inter-
esting than the revolt against modern society. A
Tolstoi in Russia, a Zola in France, an Ibsen in Nor-
way, a Howells in America, have all made their art the vehicle
of a social message. In England this tendency is especially
marked. We have seen John Ruskin and William Morris,
two of the mbst striking literary figures of the Victorian
era, break away from the old traditions, and throw the whole
weight of their influence into the struggle for better social con-
ditions. In the England of to-day we see a spectacle equally re-
markable. We find communism — that bugaboo of the respect-
able classes, that very embodiment in the popular mind of all
that is accursed — openly espoused by a group of literary men
whose genius is recognized all over the world.
Edward Carpenter is perhaps the most talented member of
this group, and he strikes a note in contemporary literature that
is as unique as it is inspiring and beautiful. Carpenter stands
for democracy in its fullest and broadest sense — democracy
which represents not merely political forms, but which pene-
trates to the very roots of society. He turns with horror from
the life of to-day, with its degradation of human life, and its sub-
ordination of beauty to profit, and pictures the days of the fut-
ure, when commercialism has been supplanted by communism.
In his dream of the society which is to be he realizes his ideal
of brotherhood of art, of nature-love.
Thirty years ago Edward Carpenter, while at Cambridge Un-
iversity, came under the influence of the Rev. F. D. Maurice,
the Christian socialist, and entered the Church of England. He
relinquished his orders, however, and for some years was a
university extension lecturer on art, music and science in the
north of England. In 1877 he visited the United States and be-
came acquainted with Walt Whitman. He had already fallen
deeply beneath the spell of this great democratic thinker, and
upon his return to England he took to farm life at Millthorpe,
near Sheffield, and began to think out his "Towards Democ-
racy." Much of this book was written in the open air, and it
breathes the spirit of the fields and flowers. "Towards Democ-
racy" and its sister poems, were published in 1883 and were
quite startling in their unconventionality. Carpenter had be-
come saturated with the Whitman spirit. He used in his poems
the same rough, unfettered form, and held out to the world
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276 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
the same democratic ideal. "Leaves of Grass" finds its trans-
atlantic prototype in "Towards Democracy." The poem "To-
wards Democracy'* is a wonderful revelation of Carpenter's per-
sonality. In a series of seventy dramatic stanzas, which sweep
the reader along with impetuous force, the poet touches every
emotion in human life. He associated himself with the lowest
and vilest, as with the noblest; he hurls anathemas against mod-
ern sqpiety; he writes passionately of love, and of kinship with
nature and animal life ; he voices the hope of a new era of frater-
nity and beauty.
In one of the most striking passages of "Towards Democ-
racy" Carpenter gives a panoramic survey of England. With a
master hand he paints the picture he sees before him. Rivers,
mountains and cities all pass beneath his gaze:
"The beautiful grass stands tall in the meadows, mixed with
sorrel and buttercups; the steamships move on across the sea,
leaving trails of distant smoke. I see the tall white cliffs of Al-
bion.
"I smell the smell of the new-mown grass, the waft of the
thought of Death — the white fleeces of the clouds move on in
the everlasting blue — with the dashing and the spray of waves
below. . . .
"I see the sweet-breathed cottage homes and homesteads
dotted for miles and miles and miles. I enter the wheelright's
cottage by the angle of the river. The door stands open
against the water, and catches its changing syllables all day
long; roses twine, and the smell of the woodyard comes in
wafts. . . .
"The oval-shaped manufacturing heart of England lies below
me ; at night the clouds flicker in the lurid glare ; I hear the sob
and gasp of pumps and the solid beat of steam and tilt-hammers;
I see streams of pale lilac and saffron-tinted fire. I see the
swarthy, Vulcan-reeking towns, the belching chimneys, the
slums, the liquor shops, chapels, dancing saloons, running
grounds, and blameless remote villa residences. ,,
Finally comes the climax: "I see a land waiting for its own
people to come and take possession of it."
Edward Carpenter writes as one stifled by the artificiality
of modern life. In fiercest words he lays bare the shams and
hypocricies which he sees around him. He lashes "the insane
greed of riches, of which poverty and its evils are but the neces-
sary obverse and counterpart," and "smooth-faced Respectabil-
ity, so luxurious, refined, learned, pious — yet all out of other
men's labor.'' He laughs at "ideas of exclusiveness, and of be-
ing in the swim; of the drivel of aristocratic connections; of
drawing-rooms and levees and the theory of animated clothes
pegs generally; of helplessly living in houses with people who
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDWARD CARPENTER 277
feed you, dress you, clean you and despise you/' He sees a
nation that has far departed from the laws of nature and of
healthy life; ever is he haunted by the vision of the world that
might be and thoughts of "the free sufficing life — sweet com-
radeship, few needs and common pleasures/' I propound a
New Life to you/' he exclaims, "that you should bring the peace
and grace of Nature into your own daily life — being freed from
vain striving."
In a poem entitled "After Civilization" Carpenter thus beau-
tifully presents the idea of the unfolding of the new society:
"Slowly out of the ruins of the past — like a young fern-frond
uncurling out of its own brown litter —
"Out of the litter of decaying society, out of the confused
mass of broken-down creeds, customs, ideals ;
"Out of distrust and unbelief and dishonesty, and fear, mean-
est of all (the stronger in the panic trampling the weaker under-
foot);
"Out of the miserable rows of brick tenements with their
cheap jack interiors, their glances of suspicion, and doors locked
against each other;
"Out of the polite residences of tongested idleness; out of the
aimless life of wealth;
"Out of the dirty workshops of evil work, evilly done;
"I saw a New Life arise.''
In his essays Edward Carpenter has written definitely of the
economic structure of the ideal society, but in his poems he
rather gives us hopes and aspirations. He speaks of the spirit
of mutual service and dependence under Communism, in which
each will do the work before him "doubting no more of his re-
ward than the hand doubts, or the foot, to which the blood flows
according tb the use to which it is put." This conception of a
social order based upon the idea "From each according to his
ability, to each according to his need" is supported by references
to the Law of Equality, which Carpenter interprets in this way:
"If you think yourself superior to the rest, in that instant you
have proclaimed your own inferiority:
"And he that will be servant of all, helper of most, by that very
fact becomes their lord and master.
"Seek not your own life — for that is death;
"But seek how you can best and most joyfully give your own
life away— and every morning for ever fresh life shall come to
you from over the hills."
In another poem he writes of "the outspread pinions of
Equality, whereon arising Man shall at last lift himself over the
Earth and launch forth to sail through Heaven." The stanzas
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278 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
entitled "The Curse of Property" are a tremendous indictment
of existing proptrty claims, and leave no doubt as to the trend
of Carpenter's communist teachings.
This trulv remarkable book of poems strikes a note of intense
realism. Edward Carpenter accents all the facts of life, "noth-
ing blinked or concealed/' he makes himself the mouthpiece of
the "vast unfettered human heart'' in its every manifestation.
But he is also saturated with an equally intense idealism. He
lives and writes in the present, but his hope is in the future.
Edward Carpenter has given practical expression to his ideals
by taking part in the Socialist agitation of England. About the
year 1883, just after the first English Socialist society had been
founded, and while William Morris and H. M. Hyndman were
carrying on a vigorous propaganda in London, Carpenter was
drawn into the Socialist movement. It was with his money that
"Justice," the first English Socialist paper, was started, and he
both wrote and lectured on behalf of the Social Democratic Fed-
eration. When William Morris seceded from the Federation
and founded the Socialist League, Edward Carpenter showed
himself in sympathy with the new body, and contributed to
Morris' revolutionary journal, "The Commonweal." He com-
piled and published during this period an interesting Socialist
song book, with music, and shortly after some of his Socialist
lectures and articles were issued under the title of "England's
Ideal." In 1889 "Civilization, Its Causes and Cure," and other
scientific and social essays were published in book form, and a
year later he wrote a long account of his travels in India, which
he called "From Adam's Peak to Elephanta." During recent
years Carpenter has given much attention to sexual problems,
and a book entitled "Love's Coming of Age" sums up his
thoughts on love and marriage. Carpenter's last contributions
to literature are a series of essays on art and its relation to so-
ciety, published under the name "Angels' Wings," and a trans-
lation of "The Story of Eros and Psyche," from Homer's Iliad.
In the essay, "Civilization, Its Causes and Cure," we touch
the heart of Edward Carpenter's life philosophy. To the major-
ity of readers the title will seem a strange audacity — the more
so since Carpenter looks upon civilization in no mere humorous
sense, but quite soberly and seriously, as a disease. He in-
stances its unhealthiness and retinue of doctors, its feverish
spirit of unrest, and its miserable poverty; comparing these feat-
ures with the normal life of the more developed savage races.
Carpenter lays great stress on the moral and physical qualities
which humanity has lost in its progress from barbarism to civ-
ilization, and while he is far from advocating a mere return to
first principles, he shows quite clearly that civilization has not
meant all gain. He also lays emphasis on the fact that the men
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDWARD CARPENTER 270
of to-day have almost wholly abandoned nature, and "disowned
the very breasts that suckled them." "Man/' he says, "deliber-
ately turns his back upon the light of the sun, and hides himself
away in boxes with breathing holes (which he calls houses), liv-
ing ever more and more in darkness and asphyxia, and only
coming forth perhaps once a day to blink at the bright god,
or to run back again at the first breath of the free wind for fear
of catching coldl" "He is the only animal/' he adds, in another
passage, "who, instead of adorning and beautifying makes na-
ture hideous by his presence. The fox and the squirrel may
make their homes in the wood and add to its beauty in so do-
ing; but when Alderman Smith plants his villa there, the gods
pack up their trunks and depart; they can bear it no longer.
The bushmen can hide themselves and become indistinguish-
able on a slope of bare rock; they twine their naked little bodies
together, and look like a heap of dead sticks; but when the
chimney-pot hat and frock-coat appears, the birds fly screaming
from the trees!"
Edward Carpenter lays the blame for modern conditions
chiefly on the institution of private property, and its accompany-
ing system of class government. Property, he claims, has di-
vorced man (1) from nature, (2) from his true self, (3) from his
fellows. At the same time he realizes that the development of
modern society is working out its own downfall. The industrial
tendency to-day is ever toward co-operation and communal
ownership, as opposed to private competition, and as Carpenter
claims, the only logical culmination appears to be communism —
that is, public ownership of the means of life. He claims that
such conditions would insure a secure and brotherly life for all,
and that the human spirit, freed from the bonds of a sordid
commercialism, would soar to heights undreamed of to-day. He
believes that there would be an almost universal return to na-
ture and simplicity. "Then/' he says, "when our temples and
common halls are not designed to glorify an individual architect
or patron, but are built for the use of free men and women, to
front the sky and the sea and the sun, to spring out of the earth,
companionable with the trees and the rocks, not alien in spirit
from the sunlit globe itself or the depth of the starry night —
then, I say, their form and structure will quickly determine
themselves, and men will have no difficulty in making them
beautiful. In such new communal life near to nature — its fields,
its farms, its workshops, its cities — we are fain to see far more
humanity and sociability than ever before; an infinite helpful-
ness and sympathy, as between the children of a common
mother."
Edward Carpenter has much in common with two of Amer-
ica's greatest sons, Henry D. Thoreau and Walt Whitman. He
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280 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE IV
shares with both the passionate nature — love, amounting al-
most to religion; with both he revolts from the cumbrous ma-
chinery of a complex civilization. In the same way that Thor-
eau retired to his hut by Walden, Carpenter spends his days
at a farm in a beautiful Yorkshire dale, and here he lives a sim-
ple country life, working day by day on the soil and alternating
manual with intellectual toil. Occasionally also he lectures
throughout England. He has entered into relations of true fel-
lowship with the laboring people around him, who come to him
to discuss their daily affairs, their trials and their hopes. Ed-
ward Carpenter's personality is delightful. He is small and well-
proportioned and his thoughtful face is one of singular beauty,
with brown beard and expressive eyes.
"To meet Edward Carpenter/' says one of his friends, "or to
listen to one of his characteristic lectures on social questions,
is to find oneself in touch with a man who is absolutely free from
the fetters of conventionality. Here in the human world is that
which makes you think of nature — a wave of the sea, an oak on
the free hillside; it is nature become intelligent and human, or
man become a part of nature and still man! He does not strike
one as brilliant, or as learned, or as eloquent, but as something
entirely natural and fresh and unconstrained. Some happy
secret is his, and life is made beautiful and calm and full of joy
therewith. ,,
Perhaps Edward Carpenter told the world his "happy secret''
when he wrote the following poem:
\
"Sweet secret of the open air —
That waits so long, and always there, unheeded.
.1
Something uncaught, so free, so calm, large, confident —
The floating breeze, the far hills and broad sky,
And every little bird and tiny fly or flower
At home in the great whole, nor feeling lost at all or forsaken,
Save man — slight man!
He, Cain-like from the calm eyes of the Angels,
In houses hiding, in huge gas-lighted offices and dens, in pon-
derous churches,
Beset with darkness, cowers;
And like some hunted criminal torments his brain
For fresh means of escape, continually;
Builds thicker, higher walls, ramparts of stone and gold, piles
flesh and skins of slaughtered beasts,
Twixt him and that he fears ;
Fevers himself with plans, works harder and harder,
And wanders far and farther from the goal.
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EDWARD CARPENTER 281
And still the great World waits by the door as ever,
The great World stretching endlessly on every hand, in deep
on deep of fathomless content —
Where sing the morning-stars in joy together,
And all things are at home. ,,
Leonard D. Abbott.
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
The Congress of Italian Socialists
After two years of struggle against the reactionary policy of
the dominant bourgeoisie and its government, in the country
and in the Chamber, the Italian Socialists have met in Congress.
The facts that have developed since the Congress of Bolonga
(September, 1897) have brought much trouble into the different
organizations of the party, and many new elements, theoretical
and practical, have come up for discussion and regulation. Ab-
sorbed in the political struggle, the comrades had abandoned,
under pressure of circumstances, the tactics of absolute isolation,
of no electoral alliance with other parties; they had neglected
the economic organization and propaganda; they had substi-
tuted for the regular executive elected by the Congress a pro-
visional executive administered by the parliamentary group. It
thus became necessary to fill up gaps in the ideas and in the or-
ganization of the party. Despite the howls of the ultra-reaction-
ary press, through the good sense of the government, which for
once allowed the law to be observed, nearly 200 delegates met
here, at Rome, in the "Eldorado" theater, and held discussions
through the 8th, 9th, 10th and nth of September.
And first one point should be made clear: In spite of the
ardent desire of our opponents to see the Socialist Party weak-
ened and shattered by the division of its members; in spite of
the differences of opinion on electoral tactics; in spite of the
contrasts in temperament and in political and economic develop-
ment between the South and the North — the most absolute unity
in the principles of Socialism was manifested. In spite of the
warmth of the discussions, particularly upon tactics, not a voice
was raised to express a single doubt, a single hesitation regard-
ing the theoretic foundations of the party. A wave of sincere
and unanimous enthusiasm swept all before it when Comrade
Ferri, after stating his views on the tactics of no compromise,
said in a fine burst of eloquence that it might happen that his
theory be rejected, but that after the vote there would be
neither victor nor vanquished, that he would be the first to
obey the decisions of the Congress, and that the Italian Social-
ists would have given once more this superb example of dis-
cipline and of unity to the adversaries who are watching us.
And he was beaten, and the hearts beat in unison all the same!
With this preface, let us come to the work of the Congress.
The finances of the party, however much disturbed by prosecu-
tions or weakened by the economic level of our country, are nev-
ertheless in a healthy state; the weekly press has more than
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CONGRESS OF ITALIAN SOCIALISTS 285
doubled since 1896 and numbers sixty papers, most of them
very active, and putting out average editions of three or four
thousand a week. The daily "Avanti" has improved its financial
situation to the "point of being able to dispense with the con-
tributions of comrades to keep it going. The Congress, after
a viva voce vote of approval for the work of the "Avanti" and of
confidence in the editor, Bissolati," and in the management, ex-
pressed the wish that the paper be enlarged and improved in its
telegraphic service as soon as possible; it decided that the paper
be kept in Rome, and it authorized the comrades of Turin to
change their weekly organ, "II Grido del Popolo," into a daily
as soon as they could, providing the management of the party
did not think the "Avanti*' would be endangered by diminished
sales in Piedmont.
There were two very clear currents of thought in the matter
of electoral tactics; one, represented by Ferri, was for a return
to absolute isolation in the matter of electoral alliances. "The
reaction has been beaten," said Ferri, "and we as a party are not
strong enough to dispel the fear of warping our individuality
in alliance with other parties. We should, therefore, continue on
our way by ourselves and push the propaganda of the class strug-
gle because the best way to defend liberty and to democratize
the state is to make intelligent Socialists. Only in cases of ne-
cessity, where liberty is in extreme danger, ought we to ally
ourselves with the other parties of the extreme left."
"But no/' answered Modigliani and Treves, "the reaction is
not altogether beaten, it is only professing to do by the applica-
tion of the law what before it did noisily by arbitrary and evi-
dent violence; formerly it had strikers shot, to-day it supplies
their places with soldiers detailed to act as harvesters. We must
then press on to the democratization of the state, we must re-
inforce the parties of the extreme left (republican and radical)
and to that end we must not shut the door to alliances, but we
must leave the local federations free to decide for themselves,
under the vigilant supervision of the party, which will correct
any evident mistakes, at variance with the party's aim."
This second view prevailed by a majority of thirty-seven.
As to the political organization of the party, all agreed that the
national council must be abolished, being too costly in trav-
eling expenses and too slow; and that the parliamentary group,
as such, must be excluded from the management, because
subjected to the control of the party.
In the case of the small proprietors who, coming as rep-
resentatives from the North (Piedmont) and from the South
(Abruzzes) are represented as being virtually wageworkers un-
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
284 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
der the form of proprietors, the Congress decided : We encour-
age the comrades from districts of small property holdings to
continue their attempts to acquire material, so that a definite
decision may be reached in the next Congresses on the ques-
tion of the co-operatives for production and consumption, in-
surance and credit applied to agriculture and inspired by the
following principles: (i) the co-ordination and development of
agricultural production toward its collective organization, (2)
preparation of franchises with a view to public use, (3) the moral
elevation and political education of the masses of small pro-
prietors into the Socialist consciousness and into resolute ac-
tion for the improvement of their conditions of existence, (4)
a concrete propaganda of collectivist principles.
Later Anna Kulichoff proposed, and the Congress adopted
by acclamation, the elaboration on the part of the parliamentary
group of a proposed law for the regulation of woman and child
labor, with a plan for immediate agitation on the subject among
the interested class. And before closing the discussion a resolu-
tion was adopted vigorously protesting against the use of the
army by the government to replace strikers in the service of
employers.
[In August, the grape-gatherers of Molinella at the harvest
time, declared a strike, in order to obtain the wages agreed on
two years ago between employers and workmen in an explicit
schedule. The strikers demanded the election of a permanent
commission of workmen and employers for the application of
the schedule. The employers demanded soldiers to replace the
grape-gatherers. The public authority sent them. The govern-
ment, on being questioned in parliament, made a pretense of
interfering and even of recognizing the sound arguments of the
strikers. But while the hearings were prolonged, the soldiers
were finishing the vintage, and when the last ripe grape was
gathered, orders were given to remove the soldiers. Trickery
finished what illegal and partial violence had begun. That is
the last exploit of the royal army of Italy!]
As to the action of the socialists in the provincial and munici-
pal governments, it was decided to enter upon these also if in
the majority, but never to assume the responsibility of admin-
istration or to participate in it if in the minority; to maintain
an active agitation for legislative enactments in favor of com-
munal autonomy, and to work for the most necessary reforms
to ameliorate the physical condition of the workers, to munici-
palize public services, etc.
A discussion was held on the temporary emigration of Italian
workingmen to foreign countries in search of work. The con-
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
CONGRESS OF ITALIAN SOCIALISTS 285
gress adopted a resolution affirming that the Italian socialist
party has determined on a systematic following up of the cur-
rents of emigration, to incite the emigrants to enter into the
economic organizations of the countries into which they go and
to turn their energies into the cause of socialism. The Interna-
tional Bureau will keep up its correspondence with foreign col-
leagues to facilitate close relations between the local socialist
organizations and our sections in foreign countries ; the Italian
socialists who go abroad are required to register in local sec-
tions; a member of the executive of the party is detailed to
keep up the communication between the economic movement
of the workers in Italy and the emigrants; in the municipal
councils the socialists will maintain the institution of municipal
bureau of emigration; in the parliament the socialists will de-
mand the abolition of the passport taxes, the establishment of
secretaryships for Italian emigrants in the bureaus of labor
existing in France, Germany, Switzerland, etc.
The congress unanimously approved the work and the con-
duct of the parliamentary group during the struggle against
the reaction and for liberty, but it censured the deputies De
Marini and Borciani for participating in the official public fu-
neral of King Humbert. The deputy De Marini wrote that he
did not propose to submit to the judgment of the party, and he
withdrew from the socialist parliamentary group. It was time!
Finally, after deciding to hold the next congress two years
later, and after saluting the brave laborers of Molinella, the vic-
tims of reaction, and those waging the struggle in foreign lands,
the congress closed its labors by singing the Hymn of the Toil-
ers, having demonstrated by its action the truth of the refrain:
"If divided, we're but rabble,
Bound in union we are strong."
This congress, held twenty-six months after the rifle volleys
of May, one month after the assassination of the king, demon-
strated in a practical way to the reactionary classes the expansion
of deep and fruitful social energy, which comes from the resist-
less impulses of present civilization reaching out toward a plane
of civilization that is higher.
Alessandro Schiavi, in Le Mouvemtnt Socialiste.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
Philosophy of Imperialism
(Continued from October Number)
These two facts, then, of the declining rate of profit from cap-
ital, and the advance in the volume of profit which the capital-
ist class are receiving from their capital, become perfectly in-
telligible and reconcilable when considered with the further fact
that the capitalization of capital is increasing.
Again: Consider the whole of our city and suburban and
country real estate in bulk — our warehouses, offices, hotels, res-
idences, mines, farms, etc., etc. The revenues drawn from and
based upon the ownership of the same are steadily increasing.
At the same time their selling price, capitalization or actual
money value, is also increasing. Thus whilst these things of
themselves are in actuality a gradually increasing source of
profit to their owners, looked at from the point of view of the
diminishing rate of interest on this increased capitalization, they
seem to be yielding less profit.
Considered in their synthesis, or taken altogether, the fore-
going group of three economic facts, tend to firmly establish
our contention of the previous parts of this inquiry, viz., that
the United States has about attained a point where the profit-
able home investment of capital is no longer possible. The
profit of the capitalist class, instead of being devoted to the
development of new enterprises, as heretofore, is now being
used to buy up the existent enterprises. It is being used for
the purchase, at a constantly increasing valuation, of the indus-
trial and other undertakings now in operation. In other words,
the profits of our great capitalists, of our capitalist class par ex-
cellence, is beginning to be turned to the expropriation or
"freezing out'' of the small capitalist. The immense profits of
the former are absorbing the moderate capital of the latter.
The contemporary profits of our trusts are used, not to build
more mills and factories, but to buy up the small concerns out-
side the big combines, whereby their own mills and factories be-
come more valuable. The first decade of the coming century
will practically consummate the absorption of the small trader
and independent manufacturer in this manner.
The present is an era of competition between big capital and
little capital; between the capitalist class as we are beginning
to understand and use the term in the present day, and the cap-
italist class as the same existed in history up to say a genera-
tion ago. The outcome of the struggle must result in a victory
Digitized by VjOOQIC
PHILOSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM 287
for capital par excellence. The small capitalist will cease to
be a capitalist; he will become a working man, a salaried official
under the coming great industry, thus taking his place in the
ranks of the working class.
The present competition between big capital and little capi-
tal, which is now so well under way, must result in the absolute
absorption of the latter. This in its turn will eventually mean
a phenomenal increase in the prosperity of the big capitalists,
or a further addition to the profits of the trustified industries
and combinations of various natures.
Now, when this stage of things comes around, what is the
country — which will then mean, practically speaking, that frac-
tional part of the community consisting of the trusts or money
power — to do. Confined to the United States, after the large
capitalists have eliminated the small capitalists, using simply
legitimate methods of competition for this purpose, the capi-
talist class remaining will be compelled to devote their profits
to the purchase of their own capital, or the existent means of
producing wealth within the United States. In this way, as
competition gets up to and only exists among the multi-mil-
lionaires, so to speak, the capitalization of the industries of the
United States must rise to infinity; to a price absolutely prohib-
itory of their purchase. The rate of profit obtainable from an
investment of capital, the percentage of interest that may be
secured from money used in the purchase of the means of pro-
duction, will consequently sink to zero. It is in this sense that
we would be understood as saying that when the capitalist
seemingly gets nothing will be the time when he will get all.
If the nation only be given an opportunity to expand, how-
ever, instead of the capitalist class using their profits to their
own detriment; in place of devoting their surplus from the pro-
ductions of the working class to competition among themselves,
they will be furnished with a lucrative outlet for the same.
Should the reverse of this be the case, however, then under
such a national policy of unwisdom, the smaller millionaires
must be absorbed by the larger ones, just as the small million-
aires are now assimilating the hundred thousand and fifty thou-
sand dollar man. Under expansion, we may for a little while
avert the threatened consolidation of big capital and the likely
trustification of the trusts, which must otherwise develop into
an immediate actuality.
There is consequently nothing more consistent and more
logical, than that the capitalist class should so seek to adjust
matters that they may, under as convenient auspices as may be
possible, send their profits to foreign countries, where they can
reinvest them so that they will be a source of further revenue.
The intelligent expansionist knows this and has such end in
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
288 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
Restricted to our own country, our capitalist class cannot ex-
pect to obtain an appreciably greater amount of profit than they
are now getting, no matter how they may adjust affairs. The
working class of America, although they are the most intelli-
gent and industrious working class in the world- to-day or in re-
corded history, can only produce so much.
Out of the results of their production the capitalist class must
necessarily allow the producing class a living wage. The profit
of the capitalist is always limited by this physical necessity of
the worker. We may keep on adding to the capital, or rather
the capitalized value of the capital, of the United States to in-
finity; but the amount of capital (in the sense of actual things)
which the working class can manipulate for the production of
either wages or profit, in a finite quantity.
Without expansion the volume of profit which the capitalist
class may obtain must tend to become stationary. At any rate,
it can never exceed that amount which their working class,
driven to the utmost of its capacity under the smallest living
wages, can be made to produce. Without expansion, this profit
must be used competitively in buying up the existent means of
securing profit at home; it must be reinvested in the purchase
of existent industrial enterprises at a constantly progressive
capitalization. Without expansion, in place of the multiplicity
of trusts with which we are now blessed, and whose numbers
help in some measure to hold one another in check, the ten-
dency must be to the more rapid consolidation of these trusts
than would otherwise be the case. Instead of many trusts we
shall have few; but these few will be of great power. And
finally, even in our own day perhaps, we may witness the spec-
tacle of one great and powerful leviathan whose unbridled des-
potism will rule the whole of the United States with a rod of
iron.
Now, on the other hand, expansion will avert such a woeful
calamity. At any rate it may enable us to say: After us the
deluge. For given expansion, and the volume of profit which
the capitalist class may obtain will increase. To the amount
of profit produced by the American working class will be added
the profit produced from the capital supplied to an annexed
working class. Our capitalist class will be relieved from the
necessity of uselessly expending their profits in competition be-
tween themselves in regularly buying up their own capital on
a continually rising market for securities. The tendency for
the rate of profit to decline in the United States will, for the
time, be arrested.
The demand for expansion, then, is essentially a materialis-
tic demand. It involves the question as to whether the revenue
of the capitalist class of this country shall remain stationary or
Digitized by VjOOQIC
PHILOSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM 389
increase. It does not rest, as simple and foolish people may
suppose, on such a slender basis as the sentiment of human
brotherhood. The benevolent assimilation of oppressed and
degraded races, in order that they may feel the stimulus of our
refined and humanizing Republican form of government, is not
the real motive underlying imperialism at all. To think this
argues a state of unsophisticated innocence which is childlike
and bland. Nol Our new policy is not based on sentiment
but on business. To fully grasp this fact is to know that the
United States government, which simply means the capitalist
class of the United States, will rigorously continue to pursue,
on every occasion which can be made available, the course of
empire which it has already taken.
Nor is there anything new or wonderful in the clearly defined
goal to which the foreign policy of the United States, a country
hitherto without a foreign policy, is leading the commonwealth.
There are historic instances innumerable of this peculiar recur-
rence of events in the life of nations. To mention no other
country, England went through precisely the same experience
over a century ago.
About this time there sprung up in this country a galaxy of
inventors, who perfected the steam engine, the spinning Jenny
and machines for the weaving of yarn and cloth. With the aid
of these wonderful appliances the working class of the British
Isles were enabled to produce — profit; or an excess of value
over what was necessary for their reasonable sustenance. In
the early manufacturing days of Lancashire the profits of the
master spinners amounted to thousands per cent.
The colonial possessions of the British Empire have formed
the principal dumping ground of the profits of the capitalist
class of Great Britain. When England became soaked to the
point of absorption with capital; in proportion as the working
class became supplied with the latest and most approved ma-
chines of production, the profits of the British capitalists were
transported to her colonial possessions and there invested as
capital.
History is again repeating itself. In common with all indus-
trial nations, the United States, the youngest but most power-
ful among the nations, is beginning to experience the effects
of a redundancy of profit and plethora of capital. The failure
to find an outlet for the same must spell death to the capitalist
class.
In any society there are at bottom two ways, and only two,
by which a man may obtain a revenue. The one way is by the
exertion of labor; the other way is from the ownership of things.
That part of any man's revenue which is based on his own
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
S90 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
personal exertion of hand or brain we call wages of labor. That
part of any man's revenue which is based on the ownership of
things we call profit of capital.
Since these two revenue forms — wages of labor and profit of
capital — constitute the only forms of economic revenue in civ-
ilized society, it necessarily follows that, other things being
equal, as one of these forms increases in volume the other must
decrease; that as the wages of labor go down the profits of cap-
ital must go up, or vice versa.
If labor be producing a gross quantum of wealth which we
will call two x, and one x is distributed to this factor as a re-
turn to its exertion, then one x must be distributed as profit
to capital. Should the productiveness of labor from any cause
be increased to three x, then provided no greater sum of wealth
is distributed in the worm of wages than formerly, the profit
accruing to capital must rise to two x. And if we could con-
ceive the wages of labor as being forced down to nothing at all,
then capital must take everything, or the volume of profit rise
to three x.
Now, since the effectiveness of labor for the production of
wealth is prodigiously increasing; and since, as we take it, the
wages of labor are not increasing, the laborer failing to partici-
pate in the results of his increased productivity — it logically fol-
lows that profit must be increasing, or that the enhanced re-
sults of productive effort are being distributed in this revenue
form to the owners of capital.
This is the relation of facts as between the two grand eco-
nomic forms of revenue in the present time: Wages of labor
are decreasing; profit of capital is increasing. The reason why,
in spite of increase in productive power, wages of labor tend to
a minimum which will give but a bare living, is that the present
basis of the ownership of the means of producing wealth tends
to absorb as profit all the results of production above the abso-
lute necessities of the laborer.
Meanwhile, as we know, and as we have seen, contemporan-
eous with the absolute increase of the profit received from the
ownership of capital, the interest of money — the common de-
nominator in which the value of all capital is expressed — is de-
clining. But, as we have further seen, capital at the same time
constantly tends to be denominated in higher and higher terms
of money. This higher denomination, or greater capitalization
of capital, and the lower rate of interest thereon, is not only con-
sistent with, but also explanatory of, the concomitant actual in-
crease of profit. The positive increase in the volume of profit,
which is so distinctly characteristic of the closing years of the
present century in the United States, is but thinly disguised un-
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
PHILOSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM 291
der a diminishing rate of interest calculated on a higher valua-
tion of capital.
The distinction between the working class, a distinct class
whose whole revenue is drawn from the exertion of their labor
power, and the capitalist class, a distinct class whose revenues
are drawn exclusively from the ownership of capital, does not
as yet clearly exist in fact.
The great middle stratum of society, or the class of small cap-
italists, is still a distinct factor in the social heirarchy. This mid-
dle class, or small capitalist class, is in a large measure a work-
ing class. Their income is a composite revenue made up of
both profits of capital and wages of labor. The revenue of this
class is based on the exertion of labor as well as on the owner-
ship of capital.
Then again: The pure unadulterated capitalist, or the man of
immense wealth, in his individual capacity may likewise be a
workingman. This is perhaps nowhere so true as in the United
States. But in his capacity of capitalist, the capitalist is never a
working man. Even if he materially assists production, that
part of his revenue which is based on the ownership of his capi-
tal is profit ; it is only the residue which is wages.
The capitalist who labors, or, as the economists say, who
makes himself useful is paid for this labor and utility independ-
ently. Whatever he may do, therefore, in the way of productive
exertion, in his condition of capitalist, he is always a non-pro-
ducer. The capitalist as capitalist is not a workingman. The
revenue which he obtains in his capacity of non-producer — that
part of his income which springs from the pure right of owner-
ship in his capital — is called, in the language of the street, as
also in our own expressive terminology, profit.
The capitalist who seeks to add to his income by working,
and who consequently receives wages for his labor, by that act
becomes a functionary who is paid twice. He receives both
sources of revenue. This is the only difference between an idle
capitalist and a laboring capitalist. From the exertion of his
labor the capitalist may receive wages; but, at the same time,
from his capital he never fails to receive profit. Profit is some-
thing that accrues to him in his function of capitalist, or as own-
er of the means of producing wealth.
Let me be clearly understood here. The revenue of any man
must necessarily proceed, I say, from one of two founts — from
the ownership of capital or from the exertion of labor. Capital-
istic revenue (profit) and labor revenue (wages) practically con-
stitute the only two forms of revenue in society. Apart from
such uneconomic modes of obtaining a living as thieving, beg-
ging and gambling, the two channels, labor power and capital,
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2»2 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
are the only channels by which, so to speak, any man can come
into possession of a dollar.
The incomes of actual men may be made up from one or both
sources. The same man may, at the same time, be receiving
wages, or revenue based on the exercise of faculties which he
possesses within himself, and be also steadily in receipt of profit,
or revenue based on the ownership of things outside of himself.
We do not exactly designate, therefore, two particular classes
of men, two distinct orders of the community, whose income
is made up from each particular source exclusively. We do not
necessarily associate either of these two particular sources of
revenue with the individual.
At the same time, however, we would draw particular atten-
tion to this fact: That the tendency of industrial evolution is
making for the clearly defined confrontation of society into two
such distinct classes. If not ourselves, then our children, will
be familiar with a class drawing no revenue but from the exer-
tion of their labor, and another class drawing no revenue but
from the ownership of their capital.
As the present time, and to a certain extent, both laborer and
capitalist merge into one another by imperceptible gradations.
But every day which passes is giving to the terms "capitalist
class" and "working class" a definiteness of meaning which the
use of such terminology hardly now conveys.
The small capitalist class, that immense body of the commun-
ity which now adds to their wages by a profit from their limited
capital, is a class that is doomed to extinction. Events have
already progressed far in that direction. It is no longer neces-
sary to be an economic student, possessed of a thorough grasp
of the theory of social evolution, of the materialistic interpre-
tation of history and the class struggle, to realize the perilous
situation of the little business man. That his days are num-
bered is beginning to be a matter of commonplace knowledge.
The combination of big capital under the name of the trust is
sounding the death knell of the small proprietor. Since the
trustification of capital is now under full sway, the final assimila-
tion of the independent manufacturer and small trader into the
ranks of the wage earners is a moral certainty which may be re-
lied on to come around, not in a thousand years, but within
measurable distance.
Social evolution is fast carrying us to a point where the capi-
talist will cease to be in any sense a member of the working
class. The small capitalist, on the other hand, will be com-
pletely transmogrified into a working man. From now on we
are destined to have no little capitalist class — that is, no capi-
talist class as this term was virtually understood up to within
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PHILOSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM 398
recent years. All capitalists will cease to be working men, and
all working men will cease to own any capital.
The coming century will witness the inauguration in the
United States of America of just a plain capitalist class and a
plain working class. This in itself will help to straighten out the
so-called social problem.
The one class will derive the whole of its revenue from the
ownership of capital, the necessity of any revenue from the ex-
ertion of labor becoming superfluous. Its revenue will be all
profit. The other class will receive the whole of its revenue from
the exertion of its labor power, and no part of its revenue will
be drawn from the ownership of capital. The revenue of this
class will be nothing but wages, and the same will be fixed by
the former class at a subsistence minimum. It is to this clearly
defined confrontation of a pure capitalist class as against a pure
working class that the modern world is drifting. And the same
will be attained in the United States of America prior to any
other country.
As this economic alignment of classes comes around, the
alignment of political parties will adjust themselves thereto.
Instead of Republican, Democratic, Socialist, Populist and
other parties such as we now have, there will simply be two po-
litical factions. Whatever their names may be, one of them
will be essentially a capitalist party, fighting for the material
interests, and for the retention of political sovereignty in the
hands of the capitalist class. The other will be a working class
or labor party, whose fundamental principle will be the transfer
of political power from the capitalist class to their own class.
Party lines will be drawn tight. Every man will vote his ticket
straight. To the one party will be attracted all the capitalist
forces; round the standard of the other will rally every work-
ing man who is true to his class.
10.
Let us anticipate United States history by a few years. We
will suppose the course of events to take the direction we have
laid down; that the capitalist class proper have succeeded in
eradicating those thorns in their side in the shape of the little
capitalists; that a clear line of demarcation exists between the
capitalist class and the working class; that no man can form any
fnisconception as to which of these two classes he really be-
longs.
Further, as such a time comes around, the means of produc-
tion and transportation, must exist in such quantities that, the
capitalist class can give full employment under the most favor-
able conditions of production to the working class. At such a
stage the means of producing wealth, with which the working
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294 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
class will produce their subsistence wage and the profit of the
capitalist class, will consist of the most perfected tools, ma-
chine, and instruments of trade that science up to the time has
invented.
In order to reduce the statement of the following demonstra-
tion to its simplest terms, let us suppose the United States to be
an isolated community, representing the human race, which
scattered over the face of the earth is really isolated. In fact,
the difference between such a community and the human race
being merely a numerical one, the economical results must be
absolutely the same in each case.
On this hypothesis, then, we again propose to show the dire
distress to which the capitalist class of the United States must
be reduced by confining our country to her present territorial
limits.
We will assume that the gross revenue of the community is
two billion dollars per annum; or that the revenues of the capi-
talist class and the revenue of the working class are together
equal to this sum.
The whole of this gross sum of revenue is produced by the la-
bor of the working class, using, of course, which fact we must
not forget, the capital of the capitalist class.
Now let us further assume that of this gross revenue of two
billion dollars which the labor of the working class thus pro-
duces every year, one billion is appropriated in the form of
profit by the capitalist class as the legitimate income accruing
to this class by virtue of their ownership of capital, i. e., the land,
tools, and all facilities of production. And that one billion, or
one-half of what the labor of the working class produces, is dis-
tributed to this class as wages, or as their legitimate return for
the exertion of producing two billions.
The assumption is that the working class is producing a total
revenue of two billion dollars, or a quantity of goods up to the
value of this amount yearly, for the production of which the
capitalist class allow in the form of wages, one-half of the goods
produced, or one billion dollars. This sum will necessarily rep-
resent a minimum below which it is not possible for labor to so
live as to continue its function of production in the most effec-
tive manner. To suppose other than this would be to suppose
a lack of business acumen on the part of our capitalist class.
So the hypothesis is, that the capitalist class, there being no way
by which things may be otherwise regulated, can obtain as
profit but one-half of what the working class produce.
If # the working class of a country produce two billion dollars
worth of goods per annum, and they receive only one billion
dollars as wages, the capitalist class retaining the residue as
profit, it is clear there can be a home market for little more than
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Philosophy of imperialism %fo
one-half of the goods produced. For the capitalist class, at
least the American capitalist class, is not a consuming class; at
any rate, our capitalists are only recently learning to consume
in any but a small proportion to their profits.
For the sake of simplicity, therefore, disregarding the limited
consumption of the capitalist class altogether, the wages of the
producer not being sufficient by one-half to, purchase what he
produces, there must practically be an over-production (or un-
der consumption) of one billion dollars' worth of goods every
year. The working class, which class is the consuming class,
is mathematically unable to buy, at any time, any more of the
goods they produce than their wages amount to.
On the supposition that the United States constitutes a world
in itself, the possibility is absent of the capitalist class shipping
their profit (or the billion dollars' worth of goods which the
working class produce, but which they cannot ifford to con-
sume), out of the country and transmuting the same into capi-
tal in foreign lands, where the goods will continue to be a source
of profit.
One of the results of this limitation might be the periodical
return of what we call commercial crises or financial panics.
This is the situation. The country is full of goods which can-
not be sold; there is absolutely no market for the profit of the
capitalist class. One-half of the industries of the country must
consequently be closed down. Production must be curtailed
until the surplus of goods can be disposed of. When this is done
the wheels of commerce and industry will work smoothly once
more; or at least until such time as there occurs another glut
of production.
Shorn of the attendant intricacies and practical* entangle-
ments, this is substantially what occurs when the whole civilized
world experiences a commercial jar or shock, which viewed
from one standpoint has been caused by an over production of
goods, and looked at from another aspect is due to the fact that
there has not been enough goods consumed. Prior to such pe-
riods of international crises, the working class of the world have
been producing too many goods for the capitalist class of the
world, which of course their wages cannot buy. Consequently
a portion of the working class must cease production until such
time as supply and demand, or production and consumption, is
made once more to equate. In a little while the same round is
gone over again.
The above is one way by which the equilibrium of production
and consumption in the United States might be periodically re-
stored, as the same periodically got out of balance. But there
is one other alternative to the periodical recurrence of commer-
cial crises of this sort.
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296 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
Instead of continually having one-half of their capital remain
idle, as they must in the above circumstances; and instead of
keeping the whole of the working class only half employed, or
only half of the working class fully employed, and being under
the necessity of allowing the whole of the working class a sub-
sistence the whole of the time, the aim of the capitalist class
should be to keep their subject class in full employment all the
time.
This latter course would be a practical one were it not for
the profit which the working class would thus make for their
masters. For in this event the capitalist class would regularly
be in receipt of one billion dollars of annual profit. Now unless
we are able to expand this profit is useless; it becomes a burden;
it could only be used by the capitalists in their own exploitation.
This idea has been touched upon before in the course of this in-
vestigation; but we are now prepared to give the matter a more
detailed examination.
How do we measure the value, that is the selling price or cash
worth of capital?
By the amount of profit which it yields capitalized at the cur-
rent rate of interest.
This is to say that the selling value, or capitalization, of any
piece of property at any time, is the amount of the gross revenue
which labor produces minus the wages paid for producing the
same, multiplied by a term varying with the ruling rate of
interest.
Thus a railroad which yields a net profit of one million dol-
lars a year, when interest is three per cent, is worth thirty-three
million dollars.
With interest at three per cent all capital, all property which
yields its owner a revenue, is worth thirty-three times the
amount of the annual profit which it yields; or as we say in re-
gard to landed capital its value is thirty-three years purchase.
The selling price of any piece of capital is primarily deter-
mined by the amount of the annual profit which it yields; by the
amount of that part of the revenue annually derived therefrom
which is based on ownership pure and simple, whether the same
be in the form of landed capital, which has been produced irre-
spective of human agency; or whether in the form of industrial
capital — that is in the form of capital proper, the capital of the
text books — which has cost labor to produce the same; or
whether, which is universally the case; the property yielding
the revenue is a composite of these two elements, is immaterial.
A piece of capital yielding an annual net profit of $2,000, all
other things being equal, will always sell for twice the amount
of another piece of capital yielding only $1,000. When the rate
of interest is three per cent the selling value of two such proper-
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PHILOSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM 297
ties would be $66,000 and $33,000 respectively; which means,
that in thirty-three years the purchaser would recover in full
the amount originally paid for the property.
Retaining still the hypothesis laid down in the preceding sec-
tion, let us assume the rate of interest to be three per cent.
Now since the annual profit which the capitalist class is receiv-
ing from their capital is one billion dollars, the actual worth or
capitalized value of their capital will be thirty-three billions.
Now, being unable to invest their profit from this capital out-
side the United States, and since they cannot invest the same in
the United States (the country being supplied with a sufficiency
of capital, and the working class incapable of manipulating any
more unless we suppose an addition to their dexterity) the capi-
talist class must necessarily take this profit and reinvest it in
existing enterprises by buying up the same at a continually in-
creasing capitalization. In other words, after the big capitalist
has absorbed the small capitalist, and provided our country is
withheld from an opportunity to expand, the big capitalist will
perforce be compelled to undertake the feat of swallowing him-
self.
Thus, taking any individual member of the capitalist class,
when he can no longer get three per cent from the capitaliza-
tion of his annual profits, he will be willing to accept two per
cent. But he will only be able to do this by investing his money
in some of the existent undertakings, in order to get control of
which he will be under the necessity of offering for the same a
greater price than their then worth.
What the capitalist class will do with the profits from their
capital then, will be to compete among themselves for the
ownership of the existing means of production which are pro-
ducing this profit, thus continually placing a higher capitalized
value on the same. This is a condition of things which we have
already shown in a previous portion of our treatise to be now
in its incipient stages.
As a result of this competitive rivalry between the members
of the capitalist class for the ownership of the means which
produce their profit, a quantum of capital yielding an annual
return of say $1,000, and heretofore consequently worth $33,000
will come to possess a capitalized value of $50,000. An invest-
ment of $100, in place of yielding as previously $3 per annum
will now only yield $2. The rate of interest will have declined
from three to two per cent.
Whilst the amount of profit necessarily remains the same,
and whilst the amount of actual capital remains the same, the
rate of interest has spontaneously declined to two per cent and
the capitalization of the capital spontaneously risen to fifty
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2&8 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
billions. In this way would the equilibrium be constantly main-
tained.
Again: Competition must continue. The further competi-
tion for the ownership of the existent means of production (the
volume of which is necessarily limited by the capacity of the
working class to use them) may increase the selling price of a
quantum of capital representative of a net return of $1,000 per
annum to say $100,000. In this case the general level of interest
would have declined to one per cent, and the capitalized value
of the means of production utilized by the community risen to
one hundred billions.
It is clear that in this way, if the process meets with no in-
terruption, the capitalization of capital may so increase that the
worth of the means of production may rise to infinity. This
would be consummated by a gradual decline of the rate of in-
terest from one per cent to nothing at all. Thus:
The capitalized value of the capital
When interest falls to of the community would rise to
y'2 Per cent 200 Billions.
Y$ Per cent 400
l /i Per cent 800
1-16 Per cent 1,600
1-32 Per cent 3,200
and so on.
Perhaps the simplest and therefore most graphic description
of the outcome to which the unavoidable but suicidal policy of
our capitalists must irretrievably carry their class, may be imag-
ined by supposing the United States a vast and pure agricul-
tural nation.
Let the imagination picture the United States as reflecting
on a magnificent scale the social conditions which may still be
found existing in miniature throughout many of the provincial
districts of the old world. Allow us to suppose a practically
stationary condition of social, economic and material progress,
such as for centuries was characteristic of the greater part of
Europe; and that the country, as there and then, is owned in
comparatively small parcels by an old time landed aristocracy.
In such a community, land — agricultural land — is actually
speaking the only form of capital; and farm rent is the only
form of capitalistic revenue. There is no profit save the rent
of farming land. The landed aristocracy, whose land is their
capital, and whose farm rent is the profit on their capital, con-
stitute the capitalist class at such a stage of human progress;
the body of the population, which is engaged in agricultural
pursuits sedulously producing their own livelihood plus the said
farm rent, constitutes the working class.
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PHILOSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM «W
Now if such a landed gentry, in place of consuming their
rents, as history proves they have managed so to do in one way
or another, should become possessed of the diabolical notion
(which same idea has so far demented our capitalist class and is
fast leading them to the brink of their own destruction) to save
their revenues, what is to become of such a gentry? They
would very soon dig their own graves by such a foolish pro-
cedure.
Should the landed proprietors restrict their sumptuary ex-
penditures to their actual needs, or to a level with those of
their tenants, then since their savings could only be invested
productively in the purchase of the existing farms, it is clear
that the selling value or capitalization of the same must increase.
A piece of land yielding a given revenue net, would not only
double or treble in value, but its selling worth would tend to
rise to infinity. Since industry and manufacture is something
unknown, these landed capitalists in this event must necessarily
utilize their rent rolls to compete among themselves for the
ownership of their own broad acres. As a consequence the
ownership of the land must tend to consolidate into the hands
of a few great proprietors; the rate of interest on money fall
to nothing and the capitalization of land increase to infinitude.
Bernard de Mandeville was right and his Fable of the Bees
may be taken seriously. In the "private vices" of the rich, or
the unproductive consumption of their revenues, lies their only
salvation. To practice "public benefits," or to attempt to save
their revenues, can only consummate their — well the very oppo-
site. Rather than save one penny of his rents, it were better
that the proprietor should put a dagger to his heart.
The foregoing is essentially what must occur with the capital
and with the capitalist class of a commercial and industrial state
whose capitalists instead of spending their profit seek ever to
reinvest it.
Up to the present era of the world's history there has more
or less been incorporated in the business transactions of man-
kind a certain modicum of sentiment, kindliness, and a feeling
of good fellowship and great heartedness. This is but to say
that business competition, pure and unalloyed, has never yet
existed. Custom and that inertia in human nature which tends
to the perpetuation of whatever is, has ever entered as a modi-
fying force against the full effects of a pure competitive regime.
But when the evolution of industry and commerce has reached
a certain stage, old time business conventionalities and the bar-
riers of antiquated custom must inevitably be broken down.
Having passed through the somewhat sentimental stage, all
business transactions must come to be conducted on a plain
matter of fact basis of competition. To buy in the cheapest
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800 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
and to sell in the dearest market must pass from a dead maxim
of a few political economists into a living fact dominating all
our lives. With the total eradication of sentiment from the
business world; as there comes to be recognized but one law,
the law of competition, or the right of the strongest, then of the
capitalist class the powerful must survive and the weak must
perish.
With one important exception, the nations of the world are
traveling at snail's pace towards this point in the evolutionary
development of their business methods. This exception, of
course, is the United States. Here business has in very truth
come to mean business. In this country competition recognizes
no sentimental limitations; and neither convention nor law exer-
cises any restrictions on the lengths to which great wealth may
harass and plunder and rob the small capitalist in the fair field
of competition. Continuing on present lines it can be but a
little while ere the whole of the capital of this country must
become vested under the control of a few industrial oligarchs.
Indeed, so far has this trend of affairs progressed that we- have
already in this country an extraordinary aggregation of a few
great men — a solid great capitalist phalanx — who wittingly or
unwittingly are bound to exclusively arrogate to themselves the
ownership of all capital, of all means of producing wealth, thus
restricting the membership of their class within narrower and
narrower limits, and so continuously swelling the membership
of the working class with whom they have no community of
interest.
This coterie, our men of action and brain in the domain of
commerce, industry and finance — men who are doing, not
dreaming — are simply fulfilling the dreams of the dreamers.
They are assisting to make a reality of the visions of those pos-
sessed alone of the grand thaumaturgic power of thought. The
true idealist looks upon the combination of the big capitalistic
interests as the instrument which is to bring about the embodi-
ment of his ideals. He sees that these men are simply bending
the course of history in its right direction. He consequently
wishes their labors Godspeed, and since the same is inevitable
that they may absorb the little capitalists as quickly and as
noiselessly as may be.
The logical, outcome of our present competitive system, con-
sidered in connection with our present unconditional private
ownership of capital, must be to finally abolish competition.
The result must inevitably be an absolute refusal, on the part
of a few successful surviving members of the capitalistic class,
to dispose of their capital or means of production at any price.
So long as capital continues to be sold for a price, no matter
how extravagantly high, the purchase money will return some
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PHIL OSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM 301
interest, some fractional part of one per cent. It may take a
million dollars to buy an annuity of one dollar. But this is the
point I wish to bring out, that the competition of the capitalist
class among themselves for the ownership of the means of pro-
duction must eventually raise their capitalization to a point pro-
hibitory of purchase; and so come to carry with them the actual
ownership of the working class in a state of villenage. The
insatiable desire of the capitalist class to reinvest their profits
must result in forcing the price of the means of producing
wealth up to a point where their exchange will cease to exist.
To use a figure capital will congeal; it will solidify. The
ownership of the means of production will become vested in an
hereditary class, when as a result, society will become torpid
and retrogression set in.
There must come a point in the natural development of insti-
tutions when capital must cease to have a value. It will become
so valuable as to be invaluable. The tendency for the capital-
ization of capital to advance; the inclination for the means of
production to rise in price, must set in force a counter tendency
to take away their price. In the process of the evolutionary
progression on its present lines, capital must inevitably develop
into a close monopolistic power which is beyond price. The
private ownership of capital, on its present basis, since it is
such an invaluable and priceless inheritance, conveying as it
does the potentiality of obtaining a revenue to infinity without
working for it, must finally result in a tight monopoly of propri-
etors. The latterday capitalist class as represented by the mem-
bers of a threatened final and only trust must refuse to sell their
inheritance, or any part of the same, under any condition of
sale or purchase.
Reduced to its simplest expression, the foregoing is the ex-
planation of the observed tendency at the present time of profits
to decline to a minimum, or of the progressive depreciation in
the rate of interest.
Capital is not yielding any less profit, any less revenue in
return to its ownership, than at any former period. That it
yields a smaller percentage of increase, a lower rate of interest,
is true. But the smaller ratio of profit more than maintains
the volume of profit, since the decreasing rate of interest is con-
stantly calculated on a progressively increasing capitalization.
To grasp this fact is to understand how lower interest on capital
means a continuous increase in the revenue of the capitalist
class.
The development of capitalism in its later stages, and the
final logical outcome of the same, as we have traced the process,
is of course, inherent in the present economic system. What
we have said is not peculiar to any one country. The only
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y'
•03 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
difference in this respect is, that a commercial and manufactur-
ing community, cut off from communication with the rest of the
world, must experience the inconveniences arising from the
final developments of the present economy, sooner than it other-
wise would. But the redundancy of profit, or the final bank-
ruptcy of the capitalist class, is a condition which sooner or later,
must overtake the whole world. We cannot conceive the
human race as being ever in a position to expand beyond this
planet.
In proportion as this condition is internationally attained;
that is to say, as in the course of social evolution the universal
dominancy of capital over labor becomes perfected; as every
workingman is threatened to be placed under bond to a capi-
talist master, the constitution of society will undergo a radical
transformation. As ownership in the means of production
develops into an absolute monopoly of a numerically constantly
decreasing class; and as all outside this class will stand in a
position of subserviency to this superior caste, the present rela-
tions of capitalist class and working class will cease to exist.
As to the process of the congelation and consolidation of capi-
tal comes to assume important proportions, threatening to en-
velop society in a shroud of industrial and commercial torpor,
forces will spontaneously evolve themselves that will bring
about a disintegration of the existing order, and inaugurate a
new era of social advance.
When the evils of the present system become sufficiently bad,
the same will cure themselves. The perfection of the precipita-
tion of capital into the hands of a few, which is now in progress,
will necessarily be followed by radical change. With the abso-
lute rule of the capitalist class will be brought around the abso-
lute rule of the laborers with hand and brain. The dominancy
of the working class. When the present cycle has run its course
it will be followed by a new; but not until then.
The economic evolution, however, is working itself out so
fast in the United States in recent years, that we are not far
distant from a turning point in our national development, which
will involve an absolute rearrangement of the relations existing
between the two old time economic orders — the capitalist class
and the working class.
The knowledge of this fact is beginning to dawn on the in-
telligence of the workers of America. It will not be much
longer possible to rouse the electorate on unimportant propo-
sals of change. Faith is beginning to be lost in the idea of
compromise with the capitalist; economic nostrums of crack-
brained sociologists are losing their force. The working man
of America is waiting for something real; something substantial.
He already knows that only something heroic will serve him.
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PHILOSOPHY OF IMPERIALISM 803
He is ceasing to think of patching things up; he is looking for-
ward to having them revolutionized.
The revolutionary demand — i. e. the demand of the laborer
for the whole of the produce of his labor — is not, as yet, dis-
tinctly voiced in the United States. But its spirit is amongst us.
The desire for radical change is engraven on the hearts of the
American working class. Tomorrow it will be on their ballots.
What will be the shape that this revolutionary demand will
finally assume; how the transition to the new order of things
which is certain to be substituted for the old may be ultimately
effected; whether the future constitution of society is to be a
democratic collectivism, that is the communization of the means
of production, which is the object the socialist movement at
present puts before itself as an ideal; or whether we are to have
a democratic individualism, which is a term I would use to des-
ignate a condition of society based on the present private owner-
ship of capital with this difference over now, that the profit
accruing from such private ownership will be socialized — a
condition of society whose private property ceases to yield a
private revenue — are profounder questions than it is possible
to discuss in this paper.
But this we may take for certain, that one way or another,
that is to say through one of the above only two logical alterna-
tives, the private appropriation of capitalistic revenue or the
robbery of the working class by the capitalistic class, must cease.
Our argument is ended. All I have endeavored to make clear
in this fragment is this: That from the point of view of the
capitalist class expansion or imperialism is a stern necessity;
it is something which must be. That from the point of view
of the working class expansion is, or rather ought to be, some-
thing absolutely devoid of charm; something not worth talking
about. Our new foreign policy has no concern, one way or the
other, with the material interests of this class. The one thing
that alone primarily concerns the present well being and future
welfare of the workers of America is the condition of things at
home, or the manner in which their exploitation is being aggra-
vated by the rapid but inevitable growth of capitalism in this
country. Imperialism is simply a clever device which, whilst
furnishing a market in which the capitalist may dispose of the
surplus produce of the American worker, is calculated to divert
his attention from the consideration of momentous home pro-
lems.
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The Monthly Rent
"They sheared the lamb twelve times a year,
To get some money to buy some beer;
The lamb thought this was extremely queer.
Poor little snow-white lamb."— Old Sotiff.
"God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," said the Deacon.
"I will shut the gate to the field so as to keep him warm/'
said the Philanthropist.
"If you give me the tags of wool," said the Charity Clipper,
"I'll let the poor creature have half."
"The lambs we have always with us," said the Wool-Broker.
"Lambs must always be shorn," said the Business Man,
"hand me the shears."
"We should leave him enough wool to make him a coat," said
the Profit-Sharer.
"His condition is improving," said the Land-Owner, "for his
fleece will be longer next year."
"We should prohibit cutting his flesh when we shear," said
the Legislator.
"But I intend," said the Radical, "to stop this shearing."
The others united to throw him out, then they divided the
wool. Bolton Hall.
801
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Some Questions at the Paris Congress
[The following report from Candidate Job Harriman, the Social Democratic
candidate for Vice President and delegate to the Paris Congress, arrived after
the article on the Congress published elsewhere was already in print. As it
covers many new points and brings the readers In personal touch with the Con-
gress, it is given herewith.— Bd.]
| HE steps taken by the late International Socialist
Congress at Paris will cause it to be remembered as
one of the most important of all the congresses yet
held. Only those who understand and are in touch
with the world-wide socialist movement can fully appreciate the
meaning of the steps just taken.
Delegations from many nations, representing powerful or-
ganizations, were gathered at this congress, and though the
nations from which they came are vexed with conflicting indus-
trial, commercial and political interests, and are ofttimes thereby
plunged into war, yet these delegations emerged from this sea of
trouble and stood shoulder to shoulder, bound together by the
interests of the working class and the single purpose of abolish-
ing the industrial system that oppresses them.
Nothing could be more impressive than this marvelous soli-
darity of the working class, the greatest power in all the world,
especially when this solidarity and power is looked upon as the
prophet of liberty, equality and fraternity. No power can resist
it nor even divide it, nor yet palsy the hope and the courage that
inspires it. No aspiration could be more worthy, no achieve-
ment more resplendent with honor and glory. Thus the con-
gress entered upon its work with that intense earnestness only
to be found among men of firmest convictions that their cause
is just and their victory certain.
Only questions of general policy and of international interest
were considered by this congress. There being no difference
as to economic principles, it only remained for them to agree
upon such tactics as were consistent with their principles and
best calculated to maintain harmony in the organizations.
Among other important declarations the congress declared for
the abolition of the standing army, and against the present pre-
vailing colonial policy under military force; and against a uni-
versal strike, at least in the immediate future, and that a uni-
versal minimum wage was impracticable at present; and for the
international organization of the marine workers with equal
pay for the same service; and that socialists should go hand in
hand with the Trades Union movement; and against a socialist
alliance with bourgeois parties, except in such cases where the
906
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
806 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
organized party by a majority vote declares to the contrary; and
the congress also organized an international bureau, providing
for the election of two secretaries from each nation to consti-
tute the board.
Space will only permit a summary of the reasons offered in
support of the most important of these declarations. Further
reference will only be made to the three declarations last men-
tioned. First as to the Trades' Union Policy. The reason ref-
erence is herein made to the resolution is not because the posi-
tion taken differs from that of previous congresses, but of its
special bearing on the American movement.
The resolution declares that socialists "should go as far as
possible hand in hand with the trades unions." It was shown
that trades unions and corporations alike are the logical result
of the wages system; that unions are the methods of warfare
employed by the working class, while corporations are the meth-
ods of warfare employed by the capitalist class; that in these
respective organizations is to be found the class interest and
class struggle in their normal condition under capitalism; that
the interest of these two classes was necessarily permanently
opposed inasmuch as the working class was necessarily the prey
of the capitalist class; that for this reason the trades union fur-
nished the logical organized base of the socialist movement; that
their interests as individuals and as unions would cause them
to accept our principles and add the ballot to their present
weapons, the strike and boycott, in their battle with the capitalist
class; that the charge of corruption made against the trades
union leaders is not a sufficient reason for fighting the union nor
yet for organizing a. new union ; for since the union was devel-
oped by the capitalist system it is apparent that the dishonest
leader is only a barnacle which always appears with the con-
centration of power and whose power for evil can be taken from
him only by education of the craft as to their real interests;
that the union being an institution developed by the capitalist
system it must continue its existence as long as the cause which
produces it remains; that the dishonest leader will also appear
as long as power is at his disposal, and power will always be at
his disposal until the rank and file are educated as to their real
interests and how to obtain them. Hence it is apparent that a
fight against the union is futile, and the logical and necessary
course to take is for all socialists to join and "go hand in hand
with their unions" in their economic struggles, using every op-
portunity to spread the knowledge of socialism not only among
the members of the unions, but also among the entire working
class.
The question over which the principal battle of the conven-
Digitized by VjOOQIC
QUESTIONS AT THE PARIS CONGRESS 307
tion was fought was, "Shall a socialist accept a position in the
ministry of a capitalist government V*
It was shown that militant socialism is only a negative of
capitalism, and that it is only a negation to the degree that the
working class have become fully conscious of their class inter-
ests. Being a negatiQn of capitalism all the power that socialists
get in any capitalist government must be taken by sheer force
of numbers. Hence it is consistent for any socialist to accept
any office to which has has been elected by his party, for an
office thus taken has been wrenched from the power of the
enemy. But the contrary is true in the case of an appointive
office. No capitalist government will appoint a socialist in or-
der that the socialist may inaugurate a system, either in part or
in whole, which is antagonistic to the capitalist state. Hence
the only purpose which a capitalist government could have in
appointing a socialist ministry would be to secure the support
of the power or party which the socialist represents. If the
socialist should accept such an appointment both he and his
party would thereby cease to be a negation of the capitalist state
and would become an ally. Since it is the power of the socialist
movement, and not the individual minister, from which the capi-
talist government seeks support, it was argued that in all cases
it was only a question of using that power to support any capi-
talist ministry whenever it was possible to preserve rights al-
ready secured or to establish new rights, and that by such
a method no obligations would be assumed by the socialist
movement on account of capitalist misgovernment. To
these principles they were all agreed. But it was pointed
out that in exceptional cases and at times of great crises
circumstances in some countries had arisen where alliances
were imperative, and had been made; that while these
alliances were dangerous and must be temporary and were not
looked upon as the normal beginning of the conquest of power
by the working class yet, when such crises arise the question of
the alliance should be referred to the party and they should be
permitted to' act as the majority thought best; that the alliance
should be discontinued at the will of the majority, and that all
appointees, if any, should relinquish their office at the command
of the majority of the party.
It was argued that whenever the majority of a party were
convinced that a crisis had arisen which either endangered es-
tablished rights or made it possible to secure new advantages
that they would act as they saw fit, national or international res-
olutions notwithstanding. And that if the international congress
laid down a positive rule, and the majority of the party in any
country should decide to act to the contrary, that the minority,
encouraged by the decision of the international congress, would
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
808 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
feel justified in withdrawing, and thus produce a split in the local
movement.
On the other hand it was argued that if the privilege was
granted, even though condemned, that there would always be
those in the movement who are greedy for power, and they
would seek to split the movement, taking a minority of the new
membership with them who could be led to believe that ad-
vantages could be gained by a socialist accepting such a posi-
tion; that this faction would then favor the accepting of such a
position. And thus they argued that the very act that was in-
tended to cement the movement would be the rock upon which
it would split.
This latter view, however, was considered by the congress as
unsound, inasmuch as experience in those countries where
temporary alliances had been formed with bourgeois parties in
emergencies had developed a contrary tendency.
Hence the Kantsky resolution was adopted which, though it
pointed out the danger of a socialist accepting a position in a
capitalist government, yet it provided that the majority of the
organized party in the country where such crises arise shall be
the final arbiter.
It is a notable fact that the vote showed that the delegations
from those countries where the movement was powerful and
for that reason had been forced into practical affairs, were unan-
imous for the Kantsky resolution, except France and Italy,
which were divided, while the delegates from those countries
where the movement was yet small were almost all unanimously
against it. This fact shows the lines along which the movement
is developing and at the same time puts us on our guard against
the dangers that inevitably arise.
This ministerial question formed the main battle-ground of
the congress. It was here that the gladiators clenched and
struggled with all their power. It was a contest of giants long
to be remembered. As they forged their argument with facts
and deductions they were greeted with great and prolonged
applause, yet with order and decorum. At last after two days
of brilliant work when the resolution was adopted, the enthusi-
asm subsided, and the apparently irreconcilable forces were har-
monious, all pledging their support thereto as they moved on
to the consideration of the next resolution. Thus one after an-
other of the questions of international interest were taken up.
Of all impressions made by the congress the overpowering
one was the tremendous and irresistible solidarity of the move-
ment. Nothing could be more apparent than the fact that the
men of each country possessed the same keen interest in the
conditions of the working class of other countries as they did
ifi the workers of their own locality,
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QUESTIONS AT THE PARIS CONGRESS 809
It was this national and international conception of the inter-
ests of the working class that gave birth to the organization of
an International Bureau. This, the most important act of the
convention, was greeted with applause on its first reading and
adopted without discussion. In the old international we had
secretaries in the various nations calling for any army. The
international was born of a theory and died without power.
But it was the prophecy of that which has come, the difference
being that the present international is born of a great move-
ment. Behind it stands the great international army of the
working class. By this board an international library will be
gathered from all nations as well as information as to methods
of propaganda employed in the various nations, not only in the
political but in the economic organizations as well as in the
various co-operative and commercial enterprises constructed by
and for the movement. This information will be sent to the
various countries on demand and thus the international move-
ment will gradually form into one compact organization, and
the small movement in the far away countries will gain strength
and courage by this close relationship.
Hitherto we have been conducting an educational propaganda
and every convert was only so much more new material gath-
ered together for the final structure. But henceforth we will
not be merely gatherers of stones and carriers of water, for this
congress, by organizing the international board, laid the cor-
nerstone of the co-operative commonwealth, and hereafter we
will add to our former labors that of the architect and the
builder. The day is not far distant when the working class will
cease to "dream they dwelt in marble halls," but will really
move into the gilded palaces fashioned by their own handy-
work. Job Harriman.
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Socialism in Sweden
A tailor named Aug. Palm who had studied Socialism in Ger-
many first introduced its principles into Sweden in 1881. He
met with much ridicule, but succeeded, however, in getting a
few followers and began publishing a paper, the "Folkviljan"
(The People's Will). He was soon forced to give up the paper
but kept on agitating and, after a hard struggle, started a Social-
ist organization which grew rapidly and, in 1883, turned into a
trade union movement.
After some internal differences among the leaders a new pa-
per, the "Nya Samfundet" (The New Society) was started and
edited by Akerberg and Sharkey, but was issued only a few
times.
In the meantime one of the most energetic of the Socialist
workers left Stockholm and, going to Malmoe in the southern
Arbetet (The Work) and at thepart of the country, started the
same time Branling became editor of the "Socialdemocraten."
The Socialist trade unions spread all over the country and
two more papers were published, "Folkelsrost" (The People's
Voice) and "Proletair."
In 1889 the trade unions held their first convention and
adopted the German Socialist Program.
The Socialist movement of Sweden is now composed of
these trade unions. About this time the Folkelsrost and
Proletair discontinued the Socialdemocraten and Arbetet be-
came daily papers. At the second convention in 1891 a debate
took place between the Anarchists and Socialists in which the
latter of the Marx school were victorious.
In 1892 a new weekly paper, the Ny Tid (New Time) ap-
peared. This circulates through Gottenburg and the western
part of Sweden and since 1899 has been a daily.
Three conventions have been held since 1891, the member-
ship during this time increasing from 10,000 to 50,000 paying
members.
In a political way the organization has not been able to do
anything because it has not yet obtained the suffrage. A prop-
erty qualification of 800 kr income a year exists and since the
producing class are all below this mark they have no political
rights.
They have forced, however, some of the storekeepers to vote
for the Socialists and have thus succeeded in electing Hjalmar
Branling to the Riksdag (Parliament).
The organizations are at present preparing for a general
strike to obtain universal suffrage. Anton Anderson,
Editor Ny Tid.
810
£
BOOK REVIEWS
»
The Poverty of Philosophy, by Karl Marx, with an introduction
by Frederick Engels. Translated from the French by H.
Quelch. The Twentieth Century Press, London. Cloth
213 pp. 2-6.
It has long been felt that it was to some degree a disgrace to
the English-speaking socialists that so few of the classics of so-
cialism have been translated into that language. Only a small
fraction of the writings of Marx are as yet accessible save in
French or German and many of the criticisms of "Marxism'*
lose their point when the whole of the works criticised are seen.
This is especially true of the "labor value theory ," which has
so often been criticised because it did not recognize the com-
plexity of social relations. Here we have Marx criticising
Proudhon for this very error and himself discussing nearly every
feature he is commonly accused of overlooking. Here as in
Capital, one is continually impressed with the wealth of knowl-
edge displayed and the tremendous research necessary to the
preparation of the work.
The work is a reply to Proudhon's "La Philosophic de la
Misere," The Philosophy of Poverty, and is an exposure and at-
tack upon the Utopian labor exchange idea of that writer.
Proudhon had grasped in an indefinite way the underlying idea
of labor value and like those other Utopians who have in the
same indefinite way grasped the idea of the co-operative com-
monwealth, he sought to make it the basis of a scheme of a sys-
tem of "labor exchange," by means of which each one would re-
ceive what he produced. That this idea still lingers on is seen
by the dozens of similar schemes that pop up each year in this
country and is an excellent illustration of how error will persist
no matter how thoroughly it may be exploded in some quarters.
Marx shows the impossibility of all such schemes in their ap-
plication as well as the insufficient analysis of social conditions
upon which they are based. He also gives the lie by anticipation
to those later critics who have within the last few months ac-
cused him of having stolen some of the ideas in "Capital*' from
the early English Utopian socialists. In this present work,
written in 1846-7, long before Capital was begun, he takes up
these previous writers and gives long extracts from their works
and shows their weaknesses and wherein he differs from them.
311
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812 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
The fact is that instead of Marx having robbed them of any
glory they deserved, the probability is their names would have
been long ago forgotten had he not embalmed them in his works.
Incidentally he gives many new points of view on the socialist
philosophy and in the chapter on the "Metaphysics of Political
Economy" he explains the relation of the materialistic concep-
tion of history to Hegelianism in the most thorough form it has
ever been presented in English. There are some portions of this
that remind one of the terse powerful language of the Manifesto.
The following is especially so good and contains so much of the
heart of socialist philosophy that it is worthy of being presented
to our readers as a wliole.
"The economists have a singular manner of proceeding. There
are for them only two kinds of institutions, those of art and
those of nature. Feudal institutions are artificial institutions,
those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this they
resemble the theologians, who also establish two kinds of re-
ligion. Every religion but their own is an invention of men,
while their own religion is an emanation from God. In saying
that existing conditions — the conditions of bourgeois produc-
tion — are natural, the economists give it to be understood that
these are the relations in which wealth is created and the pro-
ductive forces are developed comformably to the laws of nature.
Thus these relations are themselves natural laws, independ-
ent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws which must
always govern society. Thus there has been history, but there
is no longer any. There has been history, since there have been
feudal institutions, and in these feudal institutions were found
conditions of production entirely different to those of bourgeois
society, which the economists wish to have accepted as being
natural and therefore eternal.
"Feudalism- also had its proletariat — serfdom, which enclosed
all the germs of the bourgeoisie. Feudal production also had
two antagonistic elements, which were equally designated by
the names of good side and bad side of feudalism, without re-
gard being had to the fact that it is always the evil which fin-
ishes by overcoming the good side. It is the bad side that
produces the movement which makes history, by constituting
the struggle. If at the epoch of the reign of feudalism the
economists, enthusiastic over the virtues of chivalry, the de-
lightful harmony between rights and duties, the patriarchal life
of the towns, the prosperous state of domestic industry in the
country, of the development of industry in the country, of the
development of industry organized in corporation, guilds
and fellowships, in fine of all which constitutes the
beautiful side of feudalism, had proposed to themselves the
problem of eliminating all which cast a shadow upon this lovely
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BOOK REVIEWS 818
picture — serfdom, privilege, anarchy — what would have been the
result? All the elements which constituted the struggle would
have been annihilated, and the development of the bourgeoisie
would have been stifled in the germ. They would have set
themselves the absurd problem of eliminating history.
"When the bourgeoisie had overcome it, it was no longer a
question of either the good or the bad side of feudalism. The
productive forces which were developed by the bourgeoisie un-
der feudalism had not been acquired by the bourgeoisie itself.
All the old economic forms, the civil relations corresponding to
them, the political state which was the official expression of the
old civil society, were all broken down.
"Thus, in order to fairly judge feudal production, it is neces-
sary to consider it as a system of production based on antagon-
ism. It is necessary to show how wealth was produced within
this antagonism, how the productive forces were developed at
the same time as the antagonism of classes, how one of the
classes, the bad side, the inconvenience of society, continued al-
ways to grow until the material conditions necessary to its
emancipation had arrived at maturity. Is it not sufficient to
say that the mode of production, the relations in which the pro-
ductive forces are developed, are nothing less than eternal laws,
but that they correspond to a determined development of men
and of their productive forces, and that any change arising in
the productive forces of men necessarily effects a change in their
conditions of production? As it is above all important not to
be deprived of the fruits of civilization, of acquired productive
forces, it is necessary to break the traditional forms in which
they have been produced. From the moment this happens the
revolutionary class becomes conservative.
"The bourgeoisie commences with a proletariat which is itself
a remnant of feudal times. In the course of its historical devel-
opment, the bourgeoisie necessarily develops its antagonistic
character, which at its first appearance was found to be more or
less disguised, and existed only in a latent state. In proportion
as the bourgeoisie develops, it develops in its bosom a new pro-
letariat, a modern proletariat: it develops a struggle between the
preletarian class and the bourgeois class, a struggle which, be-
fore it is felt, perceived, appreciated, comprehended, avowed
and loudly proclaimed by the two sides, only manifests itself
previously by partial and momentary conflicts, by subversive
acts. On the other hand, if all the members of the modern bour-
geoise have an identity of interest, inasmuch as they
form a class opposed by another class, they have also
conflicting, antagonistic interests, inasmuch as they find them-
selves opposed by each other. This opposition of interest flows
from the economic conditions of their bourgeois life. From day
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8U INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
to day it becomes more clear that the relations of production in
which the bourgeoisie exists have not a single, a simple charac-
ter, but a double character, a character of duplicity; that in the
same relations in which wealth is produced, poverty is produced
also; that in the same relations in which there is a development
of productive forces, there is a productive force of repression;
that these relations produce bourgeois wealth, that is to say the
wealth of the bourgeois class, only in continually annihilating
the wealth of integral members of that class and in producing an
every-growing proletariat.
"The more this antagonistic character comes to light the more
the economists, the scientific representatives of bourgeois pro-
duction, become excited with their own theories, and different
schools are formed.
"We have the fatalist economists, who in their theorv are as
indifferent to what they call the inconveniences of bourgeois
production, as the bourgeois themselves are, in actual practice,
to the sufferings of the proletarians who assist them to acquire
riches. In this fatalist school there are classicists and romantic-
ists. The classicists, like Adam Smith and Ricardo, represent a
bourgeoisie which, still struggling with the relics of feudal so-
ciety, labors only to purify economic relations from the feudal
blemishes, to augment the productive forces, and to give to in-
dustry and to commerce a fresh scope. The proletariat partici-
pating in this struggle, absorbed in this feverish labor, has only
passing accidental sufferings to endure, and itself regards them
as such. Economists like Adam Smith and Ricardo, who are
the historians of this epoch, have no other mission than to dem-
onstrate how wealth is acquired in the relations of bourgeois
production, to formulate these relations in categories, in laws,
and to demonstrate how far these laws, these categories, are,
for the production of wealth, superior to the laws and categories
of feudal society. Poverty in their eyes is only the pain which
accompanies all child-birth, in nature as well as in industry.
"The romanticists appertain to our epoch, where the bour-
geoisie is in direct antagonism to the proletariat; where pov-
erty is engendered in as great abundance as wealth. The econ-
omists then pose as satisfied fatalists who, from their lofty posi-
tion, throw a glance of superb disdain on the active men who
manufacture wealth. They copy all the developments given
by their predecessors, and the indifference which with those was
naivete becomes for these others mere coquetry.
"Afterwards comes the humanitarian school, which takes to
heart the evil side of the existing relations of production. This
school seeks, as an acquittal for its conscience, to palliate, how-
ever little, existing contrasts; it sincerely deplores the distress
of the proletariat, the unrestricted competition between the
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
BOOK REVIEWS 815
bourgeoisie themselves; it advises the workers to be sober
and industrious, and to have but few children; it recommends
the bourgeoisie to put thoughtful earnestness into the work of
production. The whole theory of this school rests upon inter-
minable distinctions between theory and practice, between prin-
ciples and results, between the idea and the application, between
the content and the form, between the essence and the reality,
between right and fact, between the good and the evil side.
"The philanthropic school is the humanitarian school per-
fected. It denies the necessity of antagonism; it would make
all men bourgeois; it would realize the theory in so far as it is
distinguished from practice and encloses no antagonism. It
goes without saying that, in theory, it is easy to make abstrac-
tion of the contradictions that are met with each instant in
reality. This theory would become then idealized reality. The
philanthropists thus wish to conserve the categories which ex-
press bourgeois relations, without having the antagonism which
is inseparable from these relations. They fancy they are seri-
ously combatting the bourgeois system, and they are more
bourgeois than the others.
"As the economists are the scientific representatives of the
bourgeois class, so the Socialists and Communists are the
theorists of the proletarian class. So long as the proletariat is
not sufficiently developed to constitute itself as a class, so long
as, in consequence, the struggle between the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie has not acquired a political character, and while the
productive forces are not sufficiently developed in the bosom of
the bourgeoisie itself to allow a perception of the material con-
ditions necessary to the emancipation of the proletariat and the
formation of a new society, so long these theorists are only
Utopians who, to obviate the distress of the oppressed classes, im-
provise systems and run after a regenerative science. But as
history develops and with it the struggle of the proletariat be-
comes more clearly defined, they have no longer any need to
seek for such a science in their own minds, they have only to
give an account of what passes before their eyes and to make of
that their medium. So long as they seek science and only make
systems, so long as they are at the beginning of the struggle,
they see in poverty only poverty, without seeing therein the
revolutionary subversive side which will overturn the old so-
ciety. From that moment science, produced by the historical
movement and linking itself thereto in full knowledge of the
facts of the case, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become
revolutionary."
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»
EDITORIAL
»
While we feel that no apologies are neecssary for the char-
acter of the Review up to the present time, and while we be-
lieve ourselves justified in saying that it has been superior to
that of any similar publication in the English language — and,
indeed, we have received hundreds of letters from all parts of
the world-wide socialist movement confirming this statement —
still we have had many plans for its improvement, and had
intended at an early date to lay those plans before our readers
and ask their co-operation in carrying them out. While in this
frame of mind and wondering how to formulate these hopes
and aspirations in suitable language, a letter was received from
Comrade Algernon Lee,, editor of "The People/' saying just
what we wished to say, and more too, and we give it herewith
with no further introduction, it being only fair to the writer
to say that it was sent as a personal communication with no
thought of publication.
Dear Comrade:
I have had It In mind for some little time to make a few suggestions
in regard to the Review, and now is as good a time as any.
With the way in which the Review covers the field it has taken I
am very well satisfied. My criticism is that the scope of the work,
thus far, is not all that could be desired. My idea of a Socialist review
is that it should be broad, not (or not only) . in the sense of being open
for the expression of varying opinions on matters of Socialist theory
and policy, but— what seems to me much more important— in the sense
of being open for the expression of progressive or revolutionary thought
and feeling in other lines as well. There are several reasons why we
need a review of this character in America.
The socialist movement is thus far, if not narrow, yet rather shal-
low. Socialism, being a revolutionary movement, touches every phase
of our social life. It has its connections with science, with ethics, with
art and literature, with education. Socialists, therefore, should be in-
terested in and informed upon all these matters. Too many of our
comrades (I think you will not suspect me of being a reformer or a
faddist because I say these things) suppose that all science is shut
up within the covers of 4< -Capital," that it settles all questions of ethics
to say that morality is the resultant of economic conditions, that they
as Socialists have nothing to do with art, literature and education. It
is true that Marx made an enormous contribution to the world's scien-
tific thought on economics and history; but there still remain subjects
for scientific thought, even within these fields. It is true that morality
is a resultant, in the last analysis, of economic relations; but there are
today burning ethical questions which demand discussion in the very
light of that broad and rather vague generalization. It is true that
art and literature are today, on the whole, the possessions of the capi-
talist class; all the more reason why we should try to cultivate an art
316
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDITORIAL 817
and literature of our own. It is true that the present system of educa-
tion-is dominated by capitalist interests; all the more reason why we
should help to make the education of the future. Most Socialists seem
not to realize these facts. There is, in my belief, grave danger that
the evolution of our society will outrun the Socialist movement, leaving
it in doctrinaire isolation from the spirit of the times. We are so much
given to repeating formulas, so little inclined or equipped to test and
apply them. Therefore, for our own general culture as Socialists, we
need a review dealing in an adequate way, from the Socialist stand-
point, with the varied elements which make up our complex social life.
Again, there is a great body of nascent revolutionary thought in our
present-day American society, wholly disconnected with or even alien-
ated from the Socialist movement, to which it rightly belongs and to
which it would lend great strength. My observation is that most col-
lege people are very stupid. Yet in every great college In the land, I
believe, we could find people, both in the faculty and in the student
body, who are cutting loose from their old moorings but who have
neither sail to propel them nor rudder to guide. It is only by chance,
combined with quite unusual personal keenness and depth, that any of
these people ever get into the Socialist movement. Most of them drift,
either till they go down In intellectual shipwreck or until they are
picked up and towed back to the old dock. Lafargue Is quite right in
what he says about the present status of the intellectuals. But are we
not to blame— partly at least? Or, rather, for blaming is in such mat-
ters a foolish proceeding, is it not our interest and duty, seeing these
things, to set them right? Can we not do something to show these
drifting intellectuals where they belong? I think we can. And I think
a Socialist review is exactly the means to do It
Men come to the same conclusions by different courses. I know good
Socialists who became such, not through reading Marx, but through
reading Spencer— and thinking. Also I know men who are not Social-
ists and know nothing about Socialism, who have, nevertheless, the
Socialist Weltanschaung, and came to it in some cases through the
study of science and the appreciation of art in one form or another, in
other cases simply through the experience of daily life. I am con-
vinced that there are very many such people who have only to see the
close connection between the position they have, so to say, accidentally
reached and that which the Socialists reach logically, to accept the
Socialist philosophy and become even active workers in the cause.
The existing magazines give no opening for the expression of revo-
lutionary thought outside of pure science. It is the part of a Socialist
review to give such an opening. I believe the review would then in-
terest many readers who now, after a glance at its table of contents,
pass it over as merely a political publication.
The Socialist, of all men, should say: "Homo sum et nihil humanl
mihi alienum pato." The relation of "manual training" to general cul-
ture and to the present and future interests of labor, the methods of
teaching history, economics, psychology and ethics in our schools and
colleges, the relations of the sexes observed in life and as reflected in
various social movements and in literature, the different ethical codes
of different social classes, the relations of different races living in one
society, the internal organization of workingmen's societies and of
various capitalist institutions, the modification of legal and political
theories in accordance with changing economic or other conditions, the
religious tendencies of the present day, the often unconscious expres-
sion of changing life-conceptions in contemporary literature— these at
once suggest themselves to me as a few of the subjects that can get
no fair hearing in our established magazines, that, too often take, in
consequence, a faddist form, but that if adequately treated, wouh)
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818 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
greatly clarify, broaden, and strengthen the Socialist movement and
bring to it many valuable recruits. Fraternally,
A. Lee.
It has always been our idea that the Review should be an
organ of the whole broad revolutionary movement that is to-
day entering into every department of human life. We hope
soon to see the day when the most important of these phases
can have their separate departments and editors in the Re-
view. Until this can be attained we wish that the whole maga-
zine may be an expression and a synthesis of these various
phases of the one great movement. We shall hope to secure
expression of those new tendencies in science, art, literature,
education and music, which are known in the world of econom-
ics and politics as socialism. The revolutionary movement in
medical science that is finding its greatest field in prevention
rather than in cure, and meets its greatest obstacle in capital-
ism, will be discussed. The new tendency in education that has
freedom, not compulsion, as its watchword and that is to-day
being throttled by industrial slavery, must find a voice. The
demand that the "hired hand" shall again become the creating
artisan, and that the product shall be a thing of beauty and an
expression of the creative instinct of the maker as well as a
source of pleasure to the worker, which Morris and Ruskin
sought to impress upon the world, and which is ranged in ever-
lasting warfare with the whole competitive system, has many
able representatives in America and England and some of these
have already agreed to use the Review at an early date as a
means of making their contribution to the common fight. The
movement in literature that seeks to free the mind from the
control of capitalism by substituting a healthy "realism" for the
corrupting productions of competition will also be represented
as a correlative movement with the great economic revolt to
which the name of socialism is commonly narrowed.
Let this not be misunderstood. This does not in any sense
mean a "broadening'' policy in the sense of compromise with
capitalism, but, on the contrary, means simply the bringing up
of hitherto divergent forces to concentrate the fire of all on the
one point.
If hitherto the columns of the Review have been almost
wholly given up to the political-economic movement, it is be-
cause, first, we have felt that it was the most important, as the
one through which the others must gain their ends; second,
because these other fields were so slightly developed that it is
difficult to secure contributors capable of presenting them in
the light of socialist philosophy; third, because the first nurrfbers
of the Review being published in the midst of a presidential
campaign, the political side was naturally of paramount interest;
"V.
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EDITORIAL 819
and finally the editor has not yet been in a position to give any-
thing near the time to the editorial work which such a policy
would require. But this last defect will soon be remedied and
the other reasons are passing away.
If such a policy is to be carried out and is to be the success
that it deserves it will require the active co-operation of all the
working socialists of this country. If our readers will do their
part to increase the circulation of the Review so that it may be
placed upon a sound financial basis, all these things will soon
follow. The success thus far has been all that could be ex-
pected. Our circulation and news-stand sales are increasing at
a rapid rate. With a little extra exertion by each present reader
all these proposed improvements can be realized in the next few
months, and America and the American socialist movement can
have a magazine that will lead the world of socialist literature.
It is for you, our readers, to decide. What will you do about it?
We wish to here repeat again that the appearance of a signed
article in these columns does not in any sense mean that the
opinions set forth meet with the editorial sanction. This is espe-
cially true of two articles lately published. It is our opinion that
there is no such fatalism in social development as is presumed
in the article on the Philosophy of Imperialism, neither do we
think that the trust problem will be solved in any such way as is
implied in the concluding paragraphs of the article in the Oc-
tober number on Trusts and Socialism. Those of our readers
who are familiar with German literature will recognize in the
first article the tendency of what is known by the German So-
cialists as the "New Utopianism/' which looks to see Socialism
come by force of fate, while the second article is an expression
of "Bernsteinism." But in our opinion both articles present
valuable and interesting phases of the problem discussed, and
should pave the way to a better understanding of Socialist phil-
osophy.
The fact that this Review is copyrighted does not mean that
other Socialist papers are prohibited from quoting anything
published herewith provided that proper credit is given, save
in the case of some of the principal articles. The copyright
is only taken out on the request of some of our correspondents
who desire to republish in more permanent form, and before
reprinting any article entire or in great part it is best to drop
a line to the publishers, who will cheerfully grant such permis-
sion unless prohibited by the author.
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820 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
Owing, as we suppose, to the fact of being constantly engaged
in active campaign work, Com. M. S. Hayes did not send in the
matter for the "World of Labor'' department in time for this
issue. However his communications will appear promptly
henceforth, and if this number is a little hurried we can promise
our readers a feast for December. Articles have been promised
for this number by Emile Vanderveld of Belgium, Kris Hardie
of England (who will discuss the recent elections, at which he
became an M. P.), Prof. George D. Herron, Jean Lonjust, and
others.
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T55 INTERNATIONAL
SOCIALIST REVIEW
Vol. I DECEMBER, 1900 No. 6
A Plea for the Unity of American Socialists *
I HERE has never come to socialism so plain an oppor-
tunity as that now offered by the American political
situation. We have reached the psychological mo-
ment when socialists may define the issues of life and
death for the nation. A united and harmonious socialistic
movement may now make clear to all the people the lines of
conflict between capitalism and socialism ; between despo ism
and liberty. These lines of conflict may be made so definite
that no party of compromise or tinkering can enter the political
field. Now is the time of socialist salvation, if we are gre;it
enough to respond to the greatness of our opportunity.
Nothing outside of socialism can defeat it; capitalism can-
not defeat socialism, any more than it can defeat the law ot
gravity, or obstruct the progress of the seasons. It lies not in
the power of capitalistic governments, or capitalistic laws, or
capitalistic standing armies, or capitalistic religions, to with-
stand the socialist evolution and freedom of society. A united
and harmonious socialist movement has the push of all the
centuries behind it, and the human future for its own. But
socialists themselves, by their want of noble unity and con- .
certed action, may put off the co-operative commonwealth and
prolong the suffering of the world's disinherited for a gen-
eration, or a century. And only by a factional and divided
socialist movement can socialism be defeated.
Let us look at our political situation, that we may see what
we have to prepare for. The break-up of the Democratic
party, and its reorganization upon strictly capitalistic lin^s,
is inevitable. The party will be captured by what is called the
* Address delivered at mas«-meetinff of Chicago Socialists, Nov. 18, and stenographically
reported for the International Socialist Review.
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823 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
old-line Democracy, represented by such men as Mr. Cleveland,
Mr. Whitney and Mr. Hill. It will become merely an oppo-
sition capitalistic party, to alternate with the Republican or
constructive capitalistic party in the possession of power. It
will then make no sort of difference to capitalists, or to the
working class either, whether the Republican or the Demo-
cratic party be in control of government; for capitalism will
be in possession of both parties. The perpetuity of the cap-
italistic system depends upon its having two political parties,
about equally matched, to play off against each other, and to
shuttle-cock the Proletaire between blind issues. American
political campaigns have long been a sort of Punch and Judy
show ; and it has been all one to the working man, whether he
was looking at Republican Punch or Democratic Judy. The
strings of both parties were in capitalists' hands. As evidence
of this, you will only need to read the recent editorials of rep-
resentative Republican newspapers, expressing most anxious
solicitude as to the reorganization and purity of the Demo-
cratic party, with wise propositions as to its necessity for the
development and protection of our institutions.
Now what will happen as the result of this organization of
the Democratic party upon openly capitalistic lines? A very
large portion of Democratic voters supported Mr. Bryan, not
because they wanted him, but as a political makeshift. He was
really wanted by neither the conservative nor the radical De-
mocracy. His negative position made him unacceptable to
old-line Democrats, and his want of economic knowledge or
definite purpose made him unacceptable to the more radical
and discontented Democrats. The capitalistic reorganization
of the Democratic party means the breaking away of this
large element of radical and discontented Democracy. With
it will merge a no inconsiderable element of the Republican
party, which voted for Mr. McKinley, not because it wanted
him, but because it rightly saw only confusion in turning to
Mr. Brvan. The danger of all this reshifting is the possible
formation of a radical or new Democratic party, with semi-
socialistic propositions and tendencies, to ga'her up and fuse
this untaught and undiscinlined American discontent, which
probably represents one-third the nation's voters. This new
radical partv will certainly appear, and possess the situation,
unless socialists lay a«ide all factional differences and enter the
national political field with a unitv and dignified action that
shall win this discontent and discipline it for intelligent and
constructive effort on the basis of the international socialists'
program. And, mind you, the agents of capitalism will <*e-
cretlv encourage this semi-socialistic party, in order to with-
stand the appearance of socialism as a definite and organized
proposition to the American people.
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PLEA FOR UNITY OF AMERICAN SOCIALISTS 838
The present tory degradation of England is chiefly due to
the tinkerings, or so-called socialistic tendencies, of the liberal
party. While English socialists were divided among them-
selves, the liberal party deluded the people with factory acts,
municipal water-works, and the like. It was this English liber-
alism, under the leadership of that prince of fakirs, Mr. Glad-
stone, that wrought the present moral and political prostitu-
tion of England.
Meanwhile, during our reshifting process, the Republican
party will be making steady encroachments upon liberty of
speech and of suffrage. In more than one state, legislation
has already been proposed that has no other motive than the
elimination of the socialist ticket from the official ballot. The
courts of injustice and the subsidized public press, as well as
an ignorant and hireling pulpit, will be turned against that
freedom of agitation and action which socialism needs for its
progress.
And international preparations against socialism will in-
crease. Behind the pomp and strut, the lies and treaties, of
international diplomacy is the subtle and far-seeing purpose to
unite the world-powers against the international socialist rev-
olution. Diplomacy is to-day but the mere shadow cast by
the vested interests of the great banking houses. And it is
against the dreaded triumph of socialism that these banking
houses are organizing the world's diplomacy. Not long ago,
Kaiser Wilhelm frankly and brutally declared socialism to be
the coming enemy against which the civilized world should
arm itself. And he has had a ridiculous picture painted where-
with to pamphleteer his warning to Europe. Lord Salisbury
has recently said that it is time for the nations to come to a
mutual understanding, or else the dregs of civilization would
overwhelm it in the near future. Lord Salisbury's dregs of
civilization are the Proletaire, no matter how else he may
define his meaning. International understanding has already
gone far enough to make sure that the menace of socialism
in one nation means the co-operation of all the great world-
powers against it. We had just as well understand that Ameri-
can socialism will not only have to meet American capitalism,
but will have to be prepared to meet all Europe at the same
time; for American capitalism will have armed Europe as its
allies. For not a throne in Europe would stand a year after
the triumph of socialism in America.
Comrades, do we see the greatness of our opportunity? Are
we great enough to unitedly take up the responsibility which
that opportunity puts upon us? I wish we might feel some-
thing of the stupendous and century-reaching consequences of
what we may decide in this meeting to-night. Who knows but
Chicago socialists may be deciding the fate of the socialist
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894 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
movement for a generation, not only for America, but for the
world? If we strive with each other upon questions of de-
tail, or upon questions of place and power, then the new radi-
cal party of which I have been speaking will possess the field,
and socialism as a distinct issue will be postponed for a gen-
eration. And we will perish in the wilderness because we are
not worthy of our opportunity. But if we present a solidly
united and harmonious comradeship, with an uncompromising
socialist program, then in four years from now we shall have
grown strong enough to hold the balance of power in the na-
tional political situation. We are able to present this program
and harmony, if we will. But, in order to match our opportun-
ity, socialism must pass out of the sectarian stage, out of the
stage of mere sectional propaganda, into lines of action that
shall win American sympathy, and nobly awaken American
labor to that class-consciousness without which we are help-
less. We have come to the moment in which a harmonious
and disciplined socialist movement may lead the untaught peo-
ples into the co-operative commonwealth.
Unity and harmony of action depend upon the widest liberty
of opinion and detail. ' We make socialism the betrayer of the
people who are crying for liberty of life, if we win them to our
program only to menace them at every turn by sheer author-
ity, and drive them from one jealous faction to another, each
faction claiming authoritative powers. The principle of author-
ity, of the rule of a single dogma or center of authority, be-
longs to the capitalistic system and not to socialism. Mere
authority is a brute principle at best. And it is upon this brute
system of authority that the capitalistic system depends.
Liberty of thought and action, under the capitalistic system,
means loss of position, daily bread, and even life itself. Social-
ism cannot make progress by the capitalistic principle of
authority upon which the church stands; the principle upon
which the old political parties and governments stand; the
principle upon which capitalistic and ecclesiastical education
stands. Sheer authority, brute dogmatism, political bossism,
factional strife, have no place among socialists. In so far as
we practice these we are traitors one to another, and capitalistic
in spirit.
The international socialist program is broad enough for the
widest variety of opinion as to detail, and as to the working out
of principle. If socialism is to emancipate the world, it must
stand for that liberty which the systems and institutions of the
past have denied. We must remember that Marx' ideal was
that of a perpetually fluid and endlessly growing civilization, in
which every element of life may find free and full expression.
The elemental meaning of socialism is the liberty of each man
to take a free look at life, to see truth for himself, and to speak
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PLEA FOR UNITY OF AMERICAN SOCIALISTS 325
his own mind about what he sees, without let or menace from
any source. Socialism is under bonds to see that each man
makes his full contribution to .be common thought and com-
mon life. If we are socialists in spirit as well as in name, we
shall not only hear one another as comrades, but we shall
gladly welcome every comrade into the full expression ot
thought and feeling, and give due and reverent consideration
to even the weakest and most seemingly stupid among us.
We must not only not restrain, but we must encourage and
sacredly nourish the utmost individuality of life and thought in
each comrade. We are true comrades in so far as we convince
every man in the ranks, and every toiler in the street or in the
mine, that he has an inestimable worth, and that he has an
invaluable contribution to make to the human whole. If we
have so little faith in the elemental meaning of socialism that
we must resort to ecclesiastical and capitalistic tactics in order
to gain our ends, then we will fail, and we ought to fail. And
the blood of the world's disinherited will be upon our heads
and not at the door of capitalism.
The American nation began with eighteenth century ideas of
liberty. It began nobly. But by the time the American rev-
olution had reached the constitutional period, it already dis-
trusted the liberty that was its inspiration. The Hamiltonian
constitution of the United States was devised as an instrument
for preventing the people from governing themselves. It has
most perfectly succeeded in that for which it was devised. The
ideals of Thomas Jefferson, of whom the Democratic party is
grotesquely ignorant, had small place in the crystallization of
our institutions. The old American passion for liberty has
thus met with sad and baffling disappointments. Only one
disappointment in history equals it ; and that is, the monstrous
perversion of Jesus by Christianity. The nineteenth century
has just gone out in a train of disappointments, beaten hopes,
broken ideals, betrayed faiths and doubted doubts.
Now socialism comes to our American life as the realization
of the liberty that has met with sore disappointment; as the
fulfillment of the genius and truth of democracy. Socialism
points out the economic basis upon which democracy must
stand in order to achieve liberty. It proclaims all liberty to
rest back upon economic liberty, and all individuality to be
rooted in economic unity. It affirms that there can be no lib-
erty save through association; no true commonwealth save
a co-operative commonwealth. It makes clear that democracy
in the state is but a tantalism and a fiction, unless it be realized
through democracy in production and distribution. It wit-
nesses that liberty, order and progress depend now upon the
ownership by the people of the means and sources of produc-
tion. It offers history as the proof that there can be no indi-
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896 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
vidual liberty or social harmony in a competitive struggle which
makes every man's life a pitched battle with civilization for
economic sustenance. It declares that liberty to be a mockery
which means merely the survival of the strong and the cun-
ning through the devouring of the weak, or through the de-
vouring of those who are too noble to strike down their broth-
ers.
Socialism must work out, in its propaganda, the needed syn-
thesis between unity of program and individual liberty of
thought and action. We must plant ourselves upon a social-
istic propaganda that is democratic in spirit, and that shall
respond to the cry of the human soul for emancipation. And
this does not mean compromise; for it is comradeship and
tolerance among ourselves that remove all danger of compro-
mise, or of parleying with the capitalistic enemy.
The rank and file of attached socialists, and several hundred
thousand unattached socialists, are asking that we present to
them an uncompromising and yet harmonious organization
that shall command their moral enthusiasm; their noble sup-
port and joyful sacrifices. We must give what these ask of
us, or perish as a present-day movement. If we stand for the
unity of human interests, we must prove our faith and sincerity
by uniting. If we stand for brotherhood, we must act like
brothers, and not like the so-called Christians who call one
another brother and then proceed to devour one another. If
we stand for the co-operative commonwealth, then in God's
name let us begin to co-operate among ourselves. Let us
give trust, and we shall receive trust. Let us show confidence
in one another ,and we shall receive confidence. Divided by
strife and suspicion, we fail, and are faithless to the world's
disinherited who stretch forth to us worn hands of entreaty.
United by patience, by good-will and brave comradeship, we
shall conquer the world, and make it a fit place for free men
and comrades to live in. And the stars themselves cannot
fight against us.
As a socialist, I believe I can be true to my comrades only
by taking the position that I will let no man under the skies
make me his personal enemy. At the same time, I will let no
man take from me one jot or tittle of the philosophy and
principle upon which socialism bases itself.
Socialists are not asking that old leaders get out of the way ;
for they recognize the long hardships which these leaders have
undergone, and their noble pioneer service in the great cause.
The socialist ranks are only asking that their leaders learn to
work together and lead harmoniously. For the multitudes
who really want socialism cannot bear to have their hopes, and
the master-opportunity of socialism, wrecked by factional
strifes, which are not only senseless and meaningless, but
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PLEA FOR UNITY OF AMERICAN SOCIALISTS 827
wicked. I cannot believe that these strifes will continue. And
I do not believe that they represent the real hearts an:l minds
of those who have engaged in them. We have only to wLness
this meeting to-night, which has impressed me with its nigral
earnestness more than with anything else. I have not seen a
sign nor heard a syllable of strife for advantage in the work of
this day; in the committee-room and on the floor I have seen
nothing but an honest and earnest desire for the good of social-
ism. I believe that the deep feeling of responsibility and unity
which pervades us at this hour really represents the spirit and
future of American socialism. If we here unite in one body
and organism of purpose and action, then we shall compel the
unity of socialists throughout the United States. And a
united and harmonious socialist movement in America means
a great new fire of hope kindled upon every socialist altar in
Europe.
* Socialism needs no religion imposed upon it from without,
and the less it has of such the safer will be its course. But it
does need to be shot through with that spiritual passion with-
out which, as Hegel says, no great movement ever prevails.
And socialism has within itself the g?rms of that passion ; it
has the seed of a new religion. Socialism has power to be-
come its own religion. Essentially, socialism is a religion — •
the religion of life and brotherhood for which the world has
long waited. It has in it that purpose which can command
the idealistic motive that lies deep in even the most matter of
fact man. Hundreds of thousands of young men and women
are crying out for some cause in which they can invest their
lives; some cause that shall afford them altars of exalted and
self-denying service. They see the gods and their temples
burning to ashes, and they ask for something that shall take
the place of these in supplying the most elemental need of
the human soul. Socialism can supply that need. It comes to
the common life as the religion of a free and happy earth ; the
religion of comradeship, and mutual hope and brotherhood.
Let socialists be true to the deeper meanings of the class strug-
gle, and they may gather into the service of socialism the great
fund of religious purpose and passion which is now hearuick,
unattached and wasted. And this religious passion, quicker
than anything else, will waken the working class to the con-
sciousness of its worth and destiny, and of the struggle and
solidarity by which the emancipation of life and labor must
come.
Let me close with the proposition with which I began: that
only a factional and divided socialist movement can defeat
socialism. There is no power in capitalism, nor in the uni-
verse, that can prevent the consummation of a united and
harmonious socialist movement in the co-operative common-
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328 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
wealth. There has never come to the world of labor, nor to
the international socialist movement, nor to the long strug-
gle of man for liberty, an opportunity like unto that which the
American political and religious situation now presents. The
American people, led by the politicians to continued economic
slaughter, are finding themselves in the economic condition of
the proletaire, whose soul and body have been so long the
grist of the capitalist mill, that he has had no opportunity to
become class-conscious, or aspire to better things. Vast intel-
lectual and religious resources are offering themselves to the
socialist cause. Now is the opportunity of socialism to gather
the disappointed American democracy, and the freely-offered
brain and heart of the younger men and women of the edu-
cated class, into the service of inspiring and disciplining Amer-
ican labor for the coming struggle and the coming liberty.
J That opportunity means a responsibility that shall match it.
For opportunity never calls a people, or a class, to responsibil-
ity without the people or the class being potentially able to
respond. The way in which we meet this responsibility and
opportunity can be nothing less than a divine judgment upon
our lives and upon our cause. The call which comes to Chi-
cago socialists to-night makes this the solemn and stupendous
moment of every comrade's life, and ought to make heroes
and Titans of us all. If we look our opportunity nobly in the
face, and turn from our differences to our task with a spirit
that shall melt all strifes and fuse all efforts, then in four years
from now we shall find lined up against the capitalist system an
invincible army of socialist comrades, filled with the joy of
battle and the certainty of victory.
America is the stage on which international socialist revolu-
tion may first be dramatized. The curtain is rung up, and
we are called upon the stage. In God's name, and in the name
of the world's disinherited, let us play our parts nobly and
acquit ourselves like men.
Prof. George D. Herron.
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Decadence of Personal Property in Europe
| HE characteristic types of personal property, instru-
ments of labor for the proprietor, not instruments
for the exploitation of labor, which still persist in the
present capitalistic societies, are: the peasant pro-
prietor, the artisan, and, to the extent that he retains property
in his stock of goods, the small merchant.
The peasant proprietor, utilizing directly his own labor,
assisted by the members of his family, reproduces among us,
more or less adapted to the modern environment, the isolated
domestic economy of the rural community of the middle ages.
The artisan, proprietor of his tools, and himself selling what*
he produces, is in our present city life the successor of the trade
guilds of the communal epoch.
As for the little retailer, the middleman who multiplies to-day
in almost all branches of production, we have seen him appear
only since the moment when the progress of the division of
labor and the extension of the markets has made way for his
intervention in exchanges.
It is since 1830, says Degreef, that retail trade and wholesale
trade have especially developed. The population active in
trade arose in 1846 to the number of 103,696, a figure which by
1856 was to rise to 156,803, — that is to say that the increase of
the number of middle-men during that period was more rapid
than the growth of population; while the latter increased by
less than 1 per cent a year, the number of merchants grew at
the annual rate of about 5 per cent.
We see then that the development of capitalism and indus-
trial concentration may have for a counterpart the multiplica-
tion of small enterprises in other branches, and notably in
commercial pursuits. But we shall have to investigate m
what proportion these little enterprises really constitute the
personal property of those who exploit them.
I. — THE PHASANT PROPRIETORS.
It is necessarily in agriculture, the least differentiated of the
great industries, that we find oftenest the archaic forms of
property and of production. Such are the "commons/' belong-
ing to the communes, but appropriated to the individual en-
joyment of the inhabitants ; the "latifundia," of feudal origin,
the domains of the prince which have become domains of the
889
830 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
state, and finally, that most perfect form of personal appropria-
tion, "peasant proprietorship/' exploited in direct production
by the cultivator, aided by members of his family, and produc-
ing almost everything required for the needs of his household.*
It is needless to say that in our countries where capitalistic
production predominates, those conditions of life where they
persist are already profoundly altered ; to find them intact with
their purely sexual division of labor, it is necessary to go to
the Slavic communities of eastern Europe.
The Bukowinian peasant, says Karl Bucher, usually efficient
by himself, when he builds a house does the work of a carpen-
ter, a roofer and other artisans, while his wife busies herself
with weaving the partitions, plastering them with clay and
stopping the chinks with moss, with beating down the earth
which is to serve them for a floor, as well as many other labors
of the same kind. From the sowing of textile plants or the
care of sheep, up to the completion of his bedding or of his
clothing, the peasant of Bukowina produces everything, even
his dyes, which he extracts from the plants he cultivates, and
his tools, naturally very primitive, which are necessary to him.
And in general it is the same with his food. Cultivating labori-
ously his field of maize, he reduces, with the aid of a hand-mill,
the grains into meal, which is his principal food ; he constructs
for himself the simple tools, dishes and utensils for his house-
keeping, or at least there is in the village some self-taught
mechanic who can do it. He generally leaves to the Bohemi-
ans, who live scattered over the country, only the manufacture
of iron.
In this stage of evolution, exchange, money, capital, all the
categories which bourgeois economy assumes to be eternal,
reduce themselves to nothing, — they can be dispensed with.
But, beginning from the moment when labor is divided,
or the acts of production are separated, one after the other,
from the domestic economy, to be transferred to social pro-
duction, peasant proprietorship, where it is not actually sup-
pressed as in certain districts of England, by brutal and bloody
confiscations, none the less is radically transformed.
The development of industry, in the cities, does away with
domestic industry, the baking of bread, wood-working, the
use of the spinning-wheel, hand weaving, for the needs of the
family; or at least it specializes them and transforms them
into those home industries, miserably paid, which still vegetate
in the lofty valleys of mountainous regions and in certain parts
of the level country.
The extension of cultivation, necessitated by the increasing
♦For precise information regarding peasant proprietorship, see chapter I. of the book
by A. Souchan, "La Propriete Paysanne*' (Paris, Larose, 1899.)
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DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY IN EUROPE 881
demand for food products in proportion to the increase of
urban and industrial population, carries with it the abolition
of common pasturage and woodland, the sale or the division
of "commons," and the consequent suppression of the cus-
tomary rights so precious to peasant proprietors.
"The communal heaths," said in 1847 the deputies from the
province of Luxembourg in the Belgian Chamber, "are the
most assured possessions of the poorer inhabitants. They
make it possible for them to keep some heads of cattle on the
common pasturage, furnish them with bedding for the cattle
and thatching for their cottages, and moreover, in certain
places a supply of firewood which aids them in procuring the
bread needed for the subsistence of tjheir families. ,,
Deprived of their "commons" — except in certain regions
where uncultivated fields are still numerous — obliged to have
money, to buy what the work of the home no longer pro-
duced, to pay the ever-increasing government charges, to pay
the hired help which replaces their sons, taken from the home
by the factory or the army, — the peasant proprietors, reduced
to the exclusive function of cultivators, are obliged to produce
exchange values, to keep their personal expenses down to ihe
minimum, to eat lard and oleomargarine from America while
they sell their butter, their calves, their cattle, their pork,
either at the market in the next village or to merchants who
too often exploit them and keep them in debt.
Finally, when the development of international relations,
the perfecting of means of transport, t|ie invasion of cereals
and other products from beyond the sea, expose agriculture
to all the fluctuations of the world market, the cultivators find
themselves obliged to improve their tillage, to amend their
technique, to transform their culture which no longer pays
into a culture that is still profitable.
The aspect of the fields is being modified. Wheat loses its
ancient preponderance; it is giving place in large measure to
market gardens, dairies and the raising of fat cattle. Pas-
turage is being transformed into artificial meadows. The soil
is furrowed with drainage and irrigation ditches.
Meanwhile, for industrialism and agriculture alike there is
need of capital, and most of the peasant proprietors have
none. So, many of them have been obliged to contract heavy
burdens of debt, to pledge their goods, or to give up laboring
on their own account and become tenant farmers.
It is this which iji great part explains the notable falling
off of peasant proprietorship in Belgium since the agricultural
crisis, and especially in the interval between the census of 1880
and that of 1895.
In 1880, out of every hundred hectares (247.1 acres) of land
under ordinary culture, 66 were worked by tenants as against
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882 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
34 by owners. In 1895 the proportion worked by owners
had declined to 31 as against 69.*
It is also important to note that direct working, peasant
proprietorship, retains its importance only in the poorest re-
gions, in the heaths of Campine, the higher marshes of Arden-
nes, the woodland cantons of the Entre Sambre and Meuse.
On the contrary, capitalist proprietorship, the exploitation by
tenant farmers, prevails almost without exception in the richest
regions, so that a conservative writer, M. de Lavallee Poussin,
could say: "The development of peasant proprietorship pro-
ceeds in inverse ratio to the selling value of the ground. Where
the land is high priced, tenantry is the dominant system; few
proprietors cultivate their patrimony themselves and most of
the peasants are tenant farmers. The reverse is the case where
the land has little value, and the more that value declines the
more does direct working tend to become the exclusive sys-
tem."!
Thus all the causes which tend to increase the value of land,
— the increase of population, the growth of cities, the extension
of industrial centers, the progress of intensive cultivation, —
tend equally to cause a divorce between property and labor,
to replace direct working and personal property by indirect
working and capitalist property.
"A necessary consequence of private property in land, under
a system of capitalist production, is the separation of the cul-
tivator-proprietor into two persons, the proprietor and the
farmer (entrepreneur.)" — Marx. Now, from the moment
when this separation is produced, the exploitation of the la-
borer begins.
It matters little, from this point of view, whether large or
small farming predominates. In districts of capitalist agri-
culture, in the strict sense of the word, characterized by the
distinction between farm proprietors, farm operators and farm
laborers, the exploitation of labor is even, as a general rule,
less excessive than in the districts of small farming, where the
farmer is in reality nothing but a piece-work laborer, reduced
to the lowest conditions of existence.
It will suffice us to cite, on this point, the unquestioned tes-
*In Germany, out of 5,276,844 holdings, there are 15.7* rented. 68.6* worked by the
owners, and 80.7* partly rented and partly worked direct, but "Tne proportion of lands
rented out by contract to those worked by the proprietor himself seems to be actually
increasing. "•— (Blondel. Etudes sur les Population Rurales de l'Allemagne. Paris: La-
roue, 1897.) In France, according to the Investigation of 1892, out of a total of 6,618,317
holdings, there are 4,190,725 worked directly and 1,487,-^23 indirectly. The general propor-
tion of cultivation by owners to cultivation by tenants Is in the ratio of three to one. In
England, according to Schaeffle, there are six times as manv holJlncrs worked by tenant
farmers as by proprietors. (Kern und Zeitfragen, p. 98. Berlin, 1895.) Thus the pro-
portion of direct working is much larger in Germany and France, where the farmers still
Include half the population, than in England and Belgium, where the industrial and com-
mercial populations form the great majority.
t u La Proprlete Paysanne" (Revue Sociale Catholique, Feb., 1898; p. 100.)
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DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY IN EUROPE 888
timony of Paul Leroy Beaulieu: "The parceling out of es-
tates into very small farms, whether it be in countries with a
dense population like Flanders and the Terra de Lavoro* (land
of labor) in the kingdom of Naples, or in a starving popula-
tion like Ireland, may be favorable to the proprietors, but it is
not without social inconveniences, sometimes also economic
disadvantages. The desperate competition of the small farm-
ers forces up rents in normal times to very high figures; the
proprietor, thus finding an easy income and one which in pros-
perous times tends to increase, stops cultivating land him-
self. In this particular case, the high rents rest upon the dis-
tress and the low standard of living of the tenants. It is this
that certain English writers have called "competitive land-
rents." *
Supposing then, as Sering forces himself to assert, in his
critique of Kautsky's recent book,f that the progress of inten-
sive culture generally results in multiplying the small and mod-
erate holdings — a matter we shall discuss later— still would it
not result that the exploitation of the agricultural laborers
must be less intense and less unjustifiable? And up to this
point, the conclusion we have reached is the decadence, more
or less rapid, more or less complete, of peasant proprietorship,
wherever the capitalist system is developing.
Again, even when they persist and where they escape being
mortgaged, the family goods, robbed of their primitive charac-
teristics, deprived of their autonomy, incorporated into the
vast organism of production for exchange, are subjected to
the sovereignty of grain merchants, millers, sugar manufac-
turers and other great barons of the agricultural industries.
Moreover, in proportion as population increases, and espec-
ially in countries where inheritance is equal — when the "zwei
kindersystem" does not come in with its demoralizing conse-
quences — the holdings, always more divided, always more im-
paired or encumbered by the claims of collateral heirs, become
so slender that they no longer suffice to make a living for
their proprietors.
The reader may remember the imprecations of the old
Clousier, the justice of the peace in Balzac's "Cure de Village,"
against the title of succession of the civil code, — "that pestle
whose perpetual motion distributes the land, individualizes for-
tunes by taking away their necessary stability, and which,
always decomposing and never recomposing, will end by de-
stroying France." It contributes, at least, in a large measure,
♦Leroy Beaulteu: "Traite Theorique et Pratique d'Economie Politique. 11 EL, p. 24.
(Paris, Guillaumin, 1896.)
tSering: "Die Agrarfrage und der Sozialismus," pp. 822 et seq.
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884 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
to destroying peasant proprietorship, whether it be to the profit
of capitalist proprietorship or of ownership in petty parcels.*
In the first case, the peasants are replaced by tenant farmers.
In the second, they find themselves obliged to seek other
means of livelihood, which are at first incidental, but eventually
become their main dependence.!
Some, and it is necessarily a small minority, start on some
small commercial pursuit, — they become retailers, tavern-
keepers, dealers in cows or poultry or manure.
Others, uprooted from their native soil, abandon to their
wives or to their relatives the cultivation of their parcel of
ground, and go abroad in the summer to work in the harvest
field, or at gathering beet-roots, or at making bricks, or any
such work, so w T hen autumn comes they bring back a few hun-
dred francs to live on through the winter. Others again, while
they keep a patch of land, which they generally have prepared
by the nearest farmer instead of working it with a spade as
formerly, themselves become wage-workers, industrial or agri-
cultural.
In Belgium notably, thanks to the closeness of the centers
of population and to the institution of "workingmen's trains,"
which carry them at a rate ten times less than that for ordinary
travelers, there are daily more than a hundred thousand coun-
try people, among whom are many petty proprietors or sons of
proprietors, who go by rail to work in factories or coal mines,
and often at surprising distances from their homes.J
Some time ago, for example, the writer was at Ossche, ^
peaceful Flemish village northwest of Brussels, some forty
miles distant by rail. Observing among the peasants who had
gathered In the public square, attracted by the socialists'
shouts, some whose faces were scarred by powder-burns, so
characteristic of miners, I asked them whether they had for-
merly worked in the "black country." "We work there yet/'
they replied. "We go every morning from Ossche to North
Brussels, from North Brussels to South Brussels by the belt
line, from South Brussels to Charleroy, and we return home
every evening by the same route."
According to information furnished by the department of
railways, there are in the district of Brussels, and especially
in East Flanders, thousands of workingmen who are in prac-
tically the same condition: ten hours at work, two hours of
♦We should regard it as a remedy worse than the disease to replace equality of shares
by any system of inheritance which should favor one of the children at the expense of
the others, and which might consolidate the peasant proprietorship in favor of the privi-
leged heir, but only by hastening the proletariazation of the heirs sacrificed.
+ According to the industrial census of the German Empire, June 14, 1806, out of each
hundred agricultural holdings there are 40.85 which are occupied by people exercising as
their main dependence some nonagricultural profession.
fVandervelde, "Les Villes Tentaculaires" (Revue d'Economie Politique, April, 1809.)
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DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY IN EUROPE 885
railroad travel going, two hours of railroad travel returning,
and often a long walk besides. We may well ask with appre-
hension what human element can remain in such lives, wholly
absorbed in the struggle for bread. And yet in spite of all
some of these very men, unconscious types of Prometheus, are
carrying back to their homes the spark snatched from socialist
altars and are kindling, even in the obscurest country places,
the great flame of hope in a better future.
Entile Vandervelde (translated by Charles H. Kerr.)
(Concluded next month.)
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
Some Ethical Problems
j UCH has recently been said about "approaching social-
ism from the ethical side," and as to whether the
changed conditions and relations that would arise
from the application of socialist principles would or
would not be "moral." A growing class of pseudo-scientific
literature refers frequently to the "ethics of industry," and
characterizes the relations between individual employers and
their workmen as being "unethical." It is offered as a "moral"
indictment against present society that it is "wrong" that the
working class is not better housed and that it does not receive
a larger proportion of the things it produces.
Unfortunately these ethical terms in the general conversa-
tion and writings of to-day have been so misused that they have
been deprived of almost all definite meaning. When the terms
of any science have been thus perverted the serious investigator
finds himself confronted with a very dangerous confusion at
the outset of his work. Numerous questions confront him.
What constitutes a moral system? What is the standard by
which an act or relation is judged as moral or immoral? In
this article there is not the space to review even briefly the
various standards of right and wrong that have been expounded
in different systems or the "ends" that have been viewed as
constituting the "ultimate good." For a future time likewise
must be reserved the proof of what will in this paper be accept-
ed as the "final object" of ethics.
In each and every stage of society the test of the fitness of
any system of ethics lies in the proof that it does or does not
conform to those conditions which make for the progress of
the race. By progress is here meant an increasing control by
man over the forces of nature ; a greater ability to make them
serve his comfort and perform his tasks; in short a growing
mastery over his environment. This greater control is equiva-
lent to a higher development of the human race. Up to this
test every system of morality has been obliged to come or dis-
appear. I am not here considering the various ideal systems
that have arisen in the minds of philosophers, and have been
formulated as Utopias toward which their authors vainly hoped
to elevate society. Neither do I refer to those idealogical crea-
tions of the human mind that have sought to analyze, classify
and arrange the motives, ends and impulses of human activity,
and which have come to be known in philosophy under the
various names of intuitional, utilitarian, eudomistic, evolution-
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
SOME ETHICAL PROBLEMS 887
ary, etc. Reference is here had to those codes of ethics actually
existing in different stages of social development.
All such systems of morals as pointed out by Spencer, Loria
and others are changing both in time and place. There has
never yet been a permanent or a universal code of ethics. Like
every other social institution they have been a product of the
changes in material surroundings, geographical locations and
different methods of gaining a livelihood that have marked dif-
ferent ages and peoples. That any system of ethics prevailed
at a certain period argued that it was produced by an under-
lying economic development which at that time was making
for human advance. In the earlier stages of barbarism, com-
munity of goods was in general accordance with social progress
and ordinarily prevailed. Gradually the institution of private
property displaced this, and with it came a code of ethics that
was suitable in every way to further and support the rights of
individual owners of property. The societies first making this
change were better able to compete, that is, more fitted *.o
survive, in the new economic environment than those retain-
ing the communal organization belonging to an earlier environ-
ment.
Further, as has been frequently pointed out, the practice of
killing those captured in battle was regarded as right at a time
when tribes which conquered, if they were to retain their con-
quests, had no other way of disposing of their enemies. But as
soon as these nomads settled to agricultural pursuits they found
it profitable to utilize their prisoners for cultivating the land,
and an ethical system arose under which slavery w-as "right/'
In states where the slave passed directly into a wage-earner,
the institution of slavery was viewed as "wrong" by public opin-
ion only when modern industry found it more profitable to
hire men and women by the day and leave them to shift for
themselves at those times when a profit could not be made off
their labor, than to house and clothe the slave through the
year. Again, as shown by Wundt, the Reformation, which was
an outgrowth of the great economic transformation of the
time, found the ethics of the Christianity of the day unable to
meet the needs of the new conditions, and a fundamental change
took place.
Since then every ethical belief is in a state of change, accord-
ing as the conditions that produce it change, the question
arises as to the meaning of the phrase "approaching socialism
from the ethical side."
We are able to answer this only by means of an examina-
tion of the system of ethics prevailing at the present time.
The present code of morality has been directly formed by the
great rise of modern industry acting upon earlier ethical prac-
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888 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
tices and transforming them to meet the new requirements
arising from the rights of private property.
One of the best illustrations of this position is seen in the
study of early German history. The German barons, fortified
in their castles, descended upon companies of travelers or
weaker neighbors and committed all sorts of violence and rob-
bery, until they are known in history by their most character-
istic trait, as the "robber barons." But an industrial change
took place in society. The modern system of trade and industry
appeared and the just arising capitalism saw its existence
threatened by these barons who fell upon the tra**ns of mer-
chandise. As this trading class grew rapidly stronger and more
wealthy, "public opinion," which hitherto in no way con-
demned these robberies, began to be formed by this new class
in its own favor, and the robber barons found themselves com-
pelled to give up their practice because of the economic change
which had given rise to new moral beliefs.
Now there will be few to deny that the industrial system of
capitalism has meant the advance of society as a whole. Apply-
ing any standard of judgment which has ever been applied to
social organisms, it cannot be disputed that the whole system
of capitalism, based on private property, competition, wage-
slaverv and the exploitation of the producer, belongs to a high-
er stage than the system of feudalism which it supplanted.
Had the domestic sv^tem continued to prevail or had each
laborer received the frll return of his work from the beginning
of capitalist production the present form of compulsory co-
operation in production and consequent division of labor prob-
ablv would not have taken place. Neither have we reason to
believe that the perfection of machinery and the growth of
great industry would have advanced so rapidly. No one can
say what the condition of society would have been had it taken
other lines of development. We are not here concerned with
conjectures as to how advance might have taken place, either
more perfectly or with less suffering to the race. We can only
deal with the fact that society has progressed through capital-
ism to a position far ah^ad of the seventeenth or eighteenth
century; that Thorold Rogers notwithstanding, the laboring
population have to-day a greater amount of the things that con-
stitute life. More fundamental still the actual control exercised
over material environment is infinitely greater than under any
other stage of society ever existing.
Capitalism had a direct function to perform for the advance
of society. To-day the question arises, is not this function per-
formed ? Will it not prove an injury to social progress if cap-
italism is longer continued? The socialist answers, Yes. The
interests of the class that profit by capitalism are no longer in
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
SOME ETHICAL PROBLEMS 889
accord with social progress, and if further advance is to be
made this functionless class must be dispensed with.
To return to the ethical beliefs that have had their origin
in capitalism and that in turn were necessary during this period
if capitalism was to continue. If capitalism meant advance
socially, then the beliefs that, arising from it, reacted upon it
and helped to maintain it, were a fit code of morals for the
time. As pointed out by Leslie Stephens in his Science of
Ethics, normally the most efficient society survives, and we may
judge from the fact of its survival that it developed the con-
ditions on which its efficiency depended.
In the light of these positions what is then meant by "ap-
proaching socialism from the ethical standpoint?" Which eth-
ical standpoint is meant, — that of feudalism, capitalism or so-
cialism? Is it simply meant that the ethics of socialism will be
different from and hence not in accord with those of capital-
ism? If so, this is rather too axiomatic a truth to be worthy
of much elaboration. Or is it meant that the ethics of capital-
ism are violated by that system, as for example, when the prin-
ciple of private property is violated by competition and ex-
ploitation ? If so, this again is simply to say, in a very round-
about way, the long recognized fact that capitalism is full of
contradictions, — that it is "its own grave-digger."
Again it is often said that the present economic system is
not "right" or that it is "immoral," or that some other system
would be "better" or more "moral." By this it is usually meant
that since men are poorly housed, clothed and fed, therefore a
system that would remove these things would be "right." This
is not the real justification of socialism, or the reason that it
may be spoken of as "right." Back of this lies the fact that
socialism will mean the progress of society. If it could be
shown that this suffering were necessary, as has been some-
times claimed, to eliminate the unfit and secure social progress,
then this would be a proof, according to the position accepted
in this article, that socialism is "immoral." This point has been
argued out by so many, including Enrico Ferri, that it will not
be discussed here and it will be taken for granted that this suf-
fering is not essential to social advance.
That socialism will work for social progress is the test by
which it n]ust be judged on the economic side. This is the only
test of its "rightness" or "wrongness" on the "moral" side.
On this ground we can meet out capitalist opponent.
Capitalism to-day must answer to the charge of clogging the
wheels of progress. The class which benefits from its contin-
uance must prove that it is any longer of social service or pro-
duces what it receives. The socialist is able to show that it
does not do this and that it is this fact that is sapping the social
organization, notwithstanding Prof. J. B. Clark's recent elab-
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840 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
orate attempt in his "Distribution of Wealth" to show that each
factor in production at the present time receives but its own.
As a corrollary to the above positions the "ethical socialist"
frequently speaks of the individual employer as a "robber."
But each employer is but a part of the system. No single em-
ployer can lessen exploitation and continue to exist. It is the
system as a whole that must be judged. The social student
who hesitates long over the "morality" of the actions of indi-
vidual employers is frequently thereby hindered from appre-
ciating the full "wrongness" of the capitalist system. "He
cannot see the woods for the trees."
ETHICAL SURVIVALS.
Before touching upon the more purely theoretical part of
ethics it would seem well to consider somewhat fully the differ-
ent elements going to make up any given system of ethics. It is
a commonplace to the socialist reader to be told that morality
in common with all other social institutions and systems v>f
thought has its foundations in the economic conditions and re-
lations of men in society.
In the early tribal times we find accounts of the killing of the
aged and the exposure of female infants. The existence of the
tribe depended on maintaining a large number of able warriors,
and since the aged and females could not assist in this principal
occupation, but only pressed upon the scanfy means of subsis-
tence, they were disposed of. When war was no longer the
chief means of existence and food became more certain and
plentiful this practice died out and became "wrong."
But no given system of morality springs directly from the
immediate economic stage in the midst of which it has its
being. Each economic system gives rise to certain ethical
beliefs and customs which are not completely destroyed by suc-
ceeding economic changes unless these latter are whollv antag-
onistic to their predecessors. These customs and beliefs sur-
vive after the conditions from which they arose have passed,
and themselves influence new moral acts. Hence each new
system is not a thing apart from all previous ones. So that
certain ethical practices belonging to a primitive time may still
survive and constitute a part of the moralitv of to-day. In
treating of courage, for instance, Leslie Stephens points out
that the estimate of that virtue once fixed has survived after
the earlv conditions that nrodneed it h'nv* long di*ar>nparerl.
Present ethics are reallv composed of those practices arising
from present environment and the survivals corning down from
earlier economic environments. The use of these two terms,
rouehlv corresponding to the bioloerical terms heredity and
environment, does not assume a dualistic philosophy. It is
simply a recognition of the existence of the time element in en-
Digitized by VjOOQlC
ETHICAL PROBLEMS 841
vironment. No system of economic conditions and relations
has ever had a clear field upon which to operate. No social
stage has ever been tabula rasa upon which to write a new sys-
tem of ethics. Customs and practices, originating in earlier
times, become a part of the environment of to-day ; persistence
of type being only past environment making itself felt in the
present.
For clearness sake, it is well here to define what is meant by
environment. Not only does this include all existing means of
economic production and distribution, but also all legal, polit-
ical, educational and cultural institutions handed down from
previous economic organizations. Since civilization began a
most important factor, founded on material differences, has
arisen in environment, — divergent social classes.
By survivals is not here meant anything in the sense in which
Herbert Spencer speaks of certain tendencies to act in certain
directions becoming hereditary, but rather the persistence of
ethical beliefs after the economic cause from which they first
arose has been removed.
Such for example is the idea of patriotism, the outgrowth of
a past age. Starting in the tribal impulse arising from the need
of united defense against surrounding foes, it took various
forms in the Greek cities and in the Roman Empire ; sank al-
most out of sight during the Middle Ages, to be revived with
well nigh wholly new ends and objects during the time of the
building up of powerful nations. The state, as the representa-
tive of the interests of the newly arising capitalist class, was the
point around which all else centered. The constant struggle
between capitalist nations demanded large armies and these
could be best secured by preaching the virtues of "patriotism."
Although the conditions that made patriotism an essential to
social progress have long gone, it lingers on, is taught in our
schools and praised in our pulpits, for the benefit, as ever, of
a ruling class, to whom alone it is advantageous.
No example can be given that will show more clearly the ex-
istence of these "survivals" than that of prostitution and ille-
gitimacy. The younger and more beautiful women among the
early slaves were forced to become the physical creatures of
their masters, who recognized no sacredness of person among
their chattels. The lord of the middle ages demanded of his
vassals, as his right, the person of their daughters or wives. It
has always been the women of a class economically lower that
have thus been compelled to submit to this degradation. To-
day even a superficial study of prostitution shows the same con-
dition. It is the women of the laboring class who are forced,
not because they are less "moral" than the women of other
classes, but because of economic pressure, to sell their bodies
to the men of the ruling class. ,
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842 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
An examination of illegitimacy shows that with few excep-
tions the mother of such a child is of a poorer economic class
than the father. Many men and women who would shrink in
horror if one should suggest that their daughter take the place,
see nothing wrong in legalizing a house to be filled with daugh-
ters of laborers. While here and there capitalist reformers
have talked upon the need for an identical standard of moral-
ity for the two sexes, no bourgeois "moralist" has yet been
bold enough to suggest an equal standard of sexual "morality"
for all economic classes.
"Private property" offers a choice illustration of the point
under discussion. At one period there was a justification for
the individual ownership of property. When each workman
took the raw material and made his tools, and then with these
tools manufactured cloth or shoes or tilled the ground, each
thing that he produced was to a great extent the product of
his individual work. To-day this method no longer exists. All
things are produced collectively, and still there survives the idea
of the "sacredness of private property." It is to-day the cor-
ner stone upon which rests the whole superstructure of capital-
ist society and class rule. Private property for the laborer is
but a farce, since the class that preaches most of the virtues of
private property is the one that takes from the producing class
all that it produces except a scanty subsistence. This fact that
"survivals" make up a part of present environment and so help
to determine ethical beliefs has been overlooked by those who
have thought of environment only in the sense of the imme-
diate present, while on the other hand the great majority of
moral teachers have entirely ignored the whole economic basis
of morality.
To turn next to the present environment, as thus consti-
tuted, we find that one of the principal elements that has en-
tered into it since the beginning of the so-called age of civ-
ilization is the economic class distinctions that have arisen
from the ownership of private property. As pointed out by
Marx and Engels the whole history of civilization has been the
history of the rise and fall of classes. The interests of each
dominating class while it existed made for social progress.
Each class fulfilled its function, became useless and disap-
peared from power. Further, a most significant fact, different
ideals of right and wrong have at all times prevailed for the
ruling and subservient classes.
We can trace this in the idea of freedom. Plato early recog-
nized freedom as a right, but to him it meant only the freedom
of the ruling class. The slave was necessary in his theory in
order that the intellectual class might have leisure. This same
term freedom came down to the Middle Ages, but again it ap-
plied only to the lords and nobles ; for the serf and villain there
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
ETHICAL PROBLEMS 848
was nothing of freedom. So to-day we speak much of free
men, and many in the United States pride themselves that they
are such. For only an infinitely small part of the race, though,
does such a thing exist to-day. Freedom to-day means free-
dom of opportunity, but to how many of the laboring class or
their children is there a remnant of such? Unable to attend
the schools, develop their physical manhood or artistic sense,
forced to toil merely for subsistence, they are as closely bound
by the system in which they live as was the serf or slave.
This double system of ethics is most plainly seen in the his-
tory of the rise and fall of classes. One of the main things
which has been instrumental in insuring: the enslavement of
the subservient class, be they slaves, serfs or wage-earners,
has been the action of a code of morals formulated in the inter-
est of the ruling class. Under chattel slavery this moral code
was enforced largely through fear. This fear took two forms,
— fear of a "ruling power" on the one hand and of the master
on the other. Later, when the slave changed to the serf, Chris-
tianity did valiant service in enforcing a moral code enslaving
the worker by preaching its doctrines of humility, affected con-
tempt for worldly goods and lavish promises of rewards after
death.
The serf, freed from the land and armed with the new inven-
tions, demanded a still stronger restraint to retain him in wage
slavery. The laborer, politically free, was still boun'l econom-
ically. This restraint took on a psychological form, — the la-
borer's body was ruled through his mind. The ruling class,
controlling press, lecture-room, school and pulpit, was able to
form public opinion and infuse into the laboring class those
ideas which would insure their continued submissiveness. The
mind can but arrange, classify and act upon those things that
the senses bring to it. He who controls the sensory channels
determines what thoughts the brain shall think. If the capital-
ist class is able to decide what shall be printed in the press,
w(iat shall be targht in the schools and what shall be spoken
from the platforms, it is able to a very large degree to decile
what the great mass of the people, and especially the laborers,
whose minds are more confined than those of the wealthy class-
es, shall think. That they have used these channels to incul-
cate lessons teaching principles of interest to the capitalist class
no observer can deny. Everywhere thev have preachei the
lesson of frugality, the "virtue" of economv, the "sacredness
of private property" and the existence of "eq^al opportunity
to rise" with consequent deification of the "self-made man."
THB KTHTCAL MOTIVE.
We come now finally to the much-disputed question of thi
part played by ethical motives in deciding upon certain courses
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344 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
of action. Ethics is not the outgrowth of some particular
"moral sense" implanted in men by a Divine power, as a cer-
tain school of ethical thought would lead us to believe. We have
not in ethics to deal with some indetinite "free" quantity that
cannot be reckoned upon. Ethics can become nothing of a
science while we admit that the will or impulses of man arc
not amenable to some laws.
In the field of biology it has been shown that from the low-
est organisms to the highest, if any stimulant is applied that
affects its nervous system painfully the organism seeks to with-
draw from the irritating substance. Those forms of life that
responded most quickly survived, and those that did not re-
spond so quickly were soonest destroyed.
This tendency to avoid pain became fixed in the organism
and in time we may say it grew to be an hereditary tendency,
as only those who avoided pain were left to carry on the spe-
cies. As pointed out by Rolph in his "Biological Problems,"
?ny such tendency is merely a certain inherited pre-disposition
acquired during thousands of years, which makes it easier to
act in certain directions.
Moved to action by this motive arising from painful or
pleasurable feelings, that is by self-interest, man's intellect acts
but the part of a discriminating guide. Hence those tribes of
men following most closely the principle of self-interest have
be^n the one?^ best able to cope with and overcome other tribes
and accommodate themselves to their environment.
In every case the self-interest of the individual has been
merged in that of the tribe, clan, or later the class to which
he belonged. Those individuals who recognized that their
interests were inseparably bound up with those of their class
performed acts that, while serving their own interests, at the
same time were in line with the progress of their class. This
is the basis of the socialist term "class consciousness." The
socialist sees that he can further his own interest only by work-
ing for that of his class.
It is here that we meet the fact that society with its present
organization of classes has made possible the following of self-
interest by but one class. In a recent article in the Journal of
Sociologv by W. W. Willonghby on "The Ethics of the Com-
petitive Process," the author endeavors to show that the inter-
est of the individual need not necessarily be antagonistic to
that of society. He criticises the statement of Kidd that in
every conceivable state the individual and society must be in
antagonism. He points out that with certain adjustments the
individual will be able to do the best for himself while further-
ing social progress. But he does not see that this is unthink-
able of all the individuals of society while it remains under
class divisions. There has been no antagonism between the
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
ETHICAL PROBLEMS 845
self-interest of the ruling class and society so long as that class
was the one which carried on social development. The antag-
onism has been between the social organization and the self-
interest of the subservient class. While a social organization
depends on the existence of two classes, one following its self-
interest, the other a code of morals serving to maintain it in
subservience, there can be no reconciliation of the interests of
all the individuals composing society with the interests of the
social whole. This is conceivable only in a society of individ-
uals to whom equal economic opportunity is assured.
Again it is here that our conception of self-interest must dif-
fer at two essential points from that of Hobbes and other early
English writers. Beginning with Locke and extending through
Bentham and James Mill, we find the idea of self-interest pre-
dominating. But these assumed the infallibility of the individ-
ual, when the individual's interests were concerned, and like-
wise took for granted that every one had an equal opportunity
to exercise his self-interest. In no way did they perceive the
existence of social classes and the consequent inability of the
laboring class to follow its own interests. Their idea of self-
interest was individualistic and was based on the principle of
free competition.
On the psychological side modern psychical research also
leads us to differ with these writers. Their "ego" was con-
fined to the narrow bounds of the person of the individual.
Prof. James has given us a definition of the "me" that materi-
ally changes the face of the question. According to James, "A
man's 'me' is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only
his body and psychic powers, but his clothes and his house,
his wife, children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and
works."
With the brute and the lower savages the "self" includes,
with some exceptions, the offspring. The gorilla and the hu-
man mother seek to protect their young. A dualistic philoso-
phy would speak of this as an example of altruism, or as a
separate 'race instinct." Bue we see in this no separate motive
or instinct. Starting from the basis that the "ego" includes
more than the individual, this is also seen to be self-interest.
With the wider development of civilization the individual widens
and is more intricately bound up with social relations.
Many ethical writers have indicated a belief that society will
develop into a condition where a "higher" form of ethics will
be possible. Patten speaks of passing from a "pain to a pleas-
ure economy." Loria writes of a "final ethics." J. S. Mill rec-
ognized that utilitarianism was unworkable in present society,
but laid all his emphasis upon the possibility of intellectual ad-
vance, none upon economic changes. Spencer and Ward
describe "absolute ethics" in distinction from present "relative
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846 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
ethics/' and speak of present ethics as being "pathological."
As society develops into higher forms its ethics will in that
sense become "higher/' But I would hesitate to speak of them
as at any time "hnal" or absolute," or to describe them at any
period as "pathological."
Without passing wholly into the field of conjecture we can,
from the principles on which socialism rests, draw conclusions
as to some of its probable effects upon "ethical beliefs." The
socialist philosophy emphasizes the certainty of the abolition
of class distinctions founded on material differences and pre-
supposes a society of economic equals. In every stage of soci-
ety since the establishment of the institution of private prop-
erty there have existed two codes of ethics. The ruling class
has followed as a motive its self-interest, restrained only by the
fear of rebellion on the part of the class of slaves, serfs or
wage-earners. The subservient class, on the other hand, has
been lulled into acquiescence in its enslavement through the
persistent inculcation of the "virtues" of self-sacrifice, humility,
reverence, docility, frugality and patriotism. The abolition
under socialism of these warring class interests would neces-
sarily carry with it the abolition of these, contradictory codes
of ethics.
In a socialist society, where all are equally able to exercise
their self-interest, it will be asked what safeguard is there that
each individual will not follow this to the detriment of himself
and society? In the first place there will be the power on the
part of those injured to retaliate, a power of which the labor-
ing class in our present society is deprived. Further, the indi-
vidual who follows this motive in ways detrimental to himself
or society will be the first to be extinguished in the race. Selec-
tion, here as elsewhere, will weed out the harmful and "morally
weak," for the "morally weak" will be composed of those who
thus retard social progress.
The ancient problem of philosophers, the reconciliation of
the individual and the race, ever discussed and never answered,
because of their blindness to the fact of class antagonisms, will
at last be solved by the abolition of these antagonisms in the
co-operative commonwealth.
May Wojd Simons.
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How Much Work Is Necessary ?
LABOR COST OF PRODUCTION.
I HE statistical work embodied in the XHIth An-
nual Report of the United States Department of
Labor* has, so far, been treated in a wholly non-
critical manner and largely through mere quo-
tations such as were given in the daily papers.* Besides,
only one of its features was considered, — that of the oppor-
tunity it offered for a comparison between different stages
of the productive efficiency of labor. That is, the productivity
of the highly developed methods of to-day was compared with
the primitive methods of a previous industrial stage. While
any thorough treatment of the subject matter of the report
would demand a discussion x>f this comparative phase, yet the
very source from which the information is secured could not
fail but throw doubts upon the conclusions, and so this discus-
sion will be confined to other phases of the subject.
In taking this position, that portion of the work is neglected
which was the sole object of the inquiry by the department.
As is known, this inquiry was called forth by a joint resolu-
tion of Congress under the provisions of which "the Commis-
sioner of Labor was directed to investigate and make report
upon the effect of the use of machinery upon labor and the cost
of production, the relative productive power of hand and ma-
chine labor, the cost of manual and machine power as they
are used in the productive industries, and the effect upon wages
of the use of machinery operated by women and children ; and
further, whether changes in the creative cost of products are
due to a lack or to a surplus of labor or to the introduction of
power machinery."
The department itself expressly admits that the results of
the inquiry do not bear upon all the points specified in the reso-
lution of Congress. In fact it does not touch the two last-
mentioned requirements. In explaining this omission, Mr.
Carroll D. Wright, in a rather diplomatically hoodwinking way,
offers the following information:
"Wages have never been steady; during periods of depres-
sion there is usually a decrease, not only in rates but in earn-
ings. This phase of the subject therefore (?) involves too
•Thirteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1896. Hand and Machine
Labor, tf volumes. Washington, D. C, 1899. To receive copy gratis apply to the Commis-
sioner, Mr. Carroll D. Wright, Department o* Labor, Washington, D. C., U. S. of America.
847
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848 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
much speculation for a thoroughly statistical presentation ; the
statistical method can be used for or against the use of machin-
ery because of its effect on wages." (Preface, p. 5.)
Yes, the statistical method can be used or misused for any
given purpose, and in the case under consideration it is some-
what difficult not to find a misuse definitely suggested in the
prefatory remarks just a few lines after the above cited pas-
sage. Here the Commissioner says :
"It is evident from an examination of the statistics presented
in this report, and especially from a study of the text analysis,
that there has been a larger increase in the number of persons
required for the production of the articles considered, in order
to meet present demands, than would have been necessary to
meet the limited demands under the hand-labor system."
Now, what is there behind the wood-pile of this phraseology ?
Certainly, no statistics are needed to prove that a larger num-
ber of persons is required to meet the increased demands of our
time than has been necessary to meet the limited demands of
past decades. But, does Mr. Wright mean to assert that the
increase of persons employed in the production of the articles
in question was relatively larger than the increase in the de-
mand for those things ? Of course, this is not what the Com-
missioner wants to say ; nor is there any evidence to this effect
in the statistics and analysis published by him.
It is natural with the system of modern or capitalist produc-
tion and especially with the method of division and sub-divis-
ion of labor, that in a factory hundreds or thousands of work-
ers are employed in making certain articles with machine power
where formerly a dozen or a smaller number of men were mak-
ing similar articles by hand. The whole problem concerning
the influence of machinery upon the condition of the laborer
hinges on a question to which the report before us has no
answer at all. That question is, does the increase in the de-
mand for the products of labor keep pace with the increase in
the number of laborers displaced by the introduction of new
machinery? It would take the space of a separate paper to
establish the actual impossibility of this equalization, which is
with many writers a much-favored lullaby for discontented
adult children of the wage-working class. Moreover, in enter-
ing into an examination of the comparisons made by the de
partment with respect to the labor cost under different indus-
trial methods, we meet statements of alleged facts that in a
startling manner challenge contradiction, but would require
for an effectually conclusive' and convincing refutation an effort
of no lesser magnitude than that of a counter-inquiry abou^
the elementary facts from which the results claimed by the
department have been derived.
Fortunately the usefulness of this publication of the Depart-
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HOW MUCH WORK IS NECESSARY f 849
ment of Labor is not limited to the comparisons made therein
between different periods or methods in the industrial devel-
opment. There is much other material of value in it. Taking
the wdrk in its entirety we believe it is a product of diligent
and careful labor, and of skillful labor, too, although it may
be true that the subject requires a good deal of insight into
the exceedingly complicated nature of the capitalist system of
production, far more perhaps than was at the disposal of the
Department. However that may be, in the two volumes before
us we are offered an opportunity for an Inquiry of our
own. To this end we have to confine ourselves to the use of
those statements, given in the report, that refer to the labor
cost under the machine methods alone, taking these item by
item, and assuming that, in consequence of the ultra-capital-
istic character of our government, of which the Department of
Labor is a branch, all the possible errors contained in the
figures tend in one direction only, that is, in that of magnify-
ing the wage account in the cost of production. With this
general warning stated in advance, and with proper objections
reserved for special cases, we will now submit some of the
official figures to an extended calculation with a view of elicit-
ing the ratio of the elements of time and money in the cost of
labor. Whatever results we may attain will serve as a con-
tribution to the solution of a very interesting problem of the
theory as well as a help in the practical agitation of socialism.
It will contribute some items for the construction of the proper
answer to a question that may be formulated in these terms:
Proceeding from the present state of mechanical productive
power, how much time of daily labor would be needed under
socialism to create all the means of a comfortable standard of
life, wholesome recreation and the highest possible culture for
all the members of the commonweath?
Here, the reader will notice, we approach a subject that,
under the hands of the well-known Austrian reformer, Dr.
Hertzka, yielded a result as summarized in the proposition
that about two and one-half hours of daily work devoted to,
and performed according to the directions of, the common-
wealth would be all that is necessary to produce wealth in
abundance for everybody. The result of Dr. Hertzka's work
may, with or without cause, have been viewed with suspicion
among socialists as being made up of mere hallucinations, or
a result of rainbow chasing. It is different with our undertak-
ing in that, we now are going to use for a similar calcula-
tion the results of an inquiry made under the auspices of a
capitalist government. Our sources of fundamental informa-
tion in this respect are simply unimpeachable; they stand far
above any suspicion of a socialist tendency.
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850 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
And now, having such an unobjectionable witness on hand,
let us see what we can draw out of him.
LABOR COST IN AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES. '
On a separate page of this issue the reader will find a statis-
tical table giving the first of the results we have obtained in
our inquiry upon the question under consideration. Some ex-
planations may not be out of place before we enter into com-
ments upon the subject matter itself.
From the Thirteenth Report of the Commissioner of Labor
as stated above, only that part is here considered wherein the
creative power of labor employed under the modern method
of production is represented by itemized statements. In other
words, it is the "machine method" (to use this term for brev-
ity's sake) that chiefly engages our attention, while the results
concerning the older or "hand" labor method will be touched
only in some incidental remarks, wherever such appears de-
sirable for rendering the discussion more intelligible and fruit-
ful.
In this discussion it is of principal importance to agree upon
the meaning of the term "labor cost." Taken in the sense of
the Marxian school of scientific political economy, the concep-
tion of labor includes all socially useful exertion, directly or
indirectly applied to the end of wealth production ; and cost of
labor is the name accepted for the aggregate amount of wages
(or salaries) paid for the total o* labor that was employed in
the accomplishment of a given amount of work at a special
stage of the working process. This item of expenditure is
to be understood as a component part of what we call the cost
of production, the latter term including some more elements,
such as the cost of raw materials, the charge for depreciation
of buildings, tools, machinery, etc., and the cost of auxiliary
materials necessary for the attainment of the industrial result
in question.
It must now be noted that in this paper the term, labor cost,
will be used in two different meanings, and wherever distinc-
tion is required to avoid misapprehension, proper qualification
will be made.
If we use the term without applying any qualification, it re-
fers to labor cost as described in the above general definition.
In this sense the labor cost of wheat bread is the total amount
of wages paid for a given quantity of the article on that special
stage of the working process that is represented by the bakery
establishment. The labor in question is here essentially con-
fined to the transformation of flour into bread, and the labor
employed on earlier stages of the working process, as in the
flour mill and on the wheat farm, is not included in the consid-
■\
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HO W MUCH WORK IS NECESSAR Y t 851
eration. In this instance it is the specific labor cost of wheat
bread to which reference is had. However, there will be other
cases where we are to consider the grand total of wages paid
for the labor that was employed in the creation of a given
article on all the different stages through which the original
raw material has passed in the working process. Wherever
this is the case, all the items of specific cost in these different
stages must be included in the computation, and the sum total
resulting from such addition is in our terminology the aggre-
gate labor cost. Thus, if we wish to determine the aggregate
lanoi cost of one pound of wheat bread, a proportional part
of the specific labor cost of both, flour and wheat, must also
t*e considered and reckoned up with the specific labor cost of
bread. ,
ihe wholo problem of these computations is a great deal
easier and simpler with respect to exclusively agricultural
products where, with the exception of seed grain, no raw ma-
teiial enters into production.
The department, in the introduction to its report, states
"that none or the administrative or clerical forces of establish-
ments are covered by these unit presentations," and further
says, "what has been aimed at has been to secure the required
facts about the actual making of an article and to neglect en-
tirely officials managing the business and clerks attending to
the accounts." This, in our opinion, is not quite in conformity
with the requirements of a scientific treatment of the subject.
A certain proportion of the labor performed by directors or
managers and superintendents, also book-keepers and clerks,
is necessary for purely regulating and administrative work
and is on principle admissible for recognition as a component
part of the labor cost. On the other hand, we must also recog-
nize that the principle just indicated will debar from the neces-
sity of consideration the lion's share of the eight minutes' daily
work performed by corporation presidents and other highly
salaried officials, that is, all of it that is applied merely to
efforts of throat cutting and wage cutting in the competitive
and class war of our time, — advertising of their goods, bribing
legislators, and all other specifically capitalistic wasting and
spoliating occupations- Rejecting all such work, which is for
society neither useful nor necessary, the remainder, if there is
something left properly chargeable to the account of labor cost,
will cut but an infinitesimally small figure.
We now come to another point regarding the range of mean-
ing covered by the term, labor cost, and there the position
taken by the department seems to us perfectly right. To use
the language of the report (introduction, page 19), this in-
cludes "foremen and others who do not devote themselves ex-
clusively to the production of the unit under consideration.
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853 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
but who, at the same time, are in charge of other branches of
work, producing other units or articles, and engineers and
firemen furnishing power not only for the making of the unit
under consideration, but also for the manufacture, perhaps
of many units." These foremen and others, the department
says, "have received special attention, and in each case the
greatest effort has been made to determine exactly the amount
of time and labor cost chargeable to them in the production of
the particular unit about which the department was making
inquiry."
In the department's report as well as in our extended com-
putations and comments, the factor of labor cost is regarded
under two aspects, namely, as expressed in money and in time-
Indeed, the drawing of comparisons between the money side
and the time side of this economic factor, the cost of labor
necessary for the production of wealth is the aim and end of
the work before the reader.
It need hardly be said that the department carefully re-
frained from touching the comparative feature just indicated.
From the domain of agriculture the department has select-
ed twenty-seven articles to serve as units for its inquiry.
Among these there are some that in name, description and
quantity appear as if being identical with another unit, while
in fact we have there different items. In order to facilitate
for the reader the survey of the tabulated matter, this duplica-
tion is discarded wherever it can be done without injuring the
value of the results.
From the two corn units of the department, 8 and 9. the for-
mer can be omitted, as it includes the operation of cutting into
fodder the stalks, husks and blades, this being an operation
which does not properly belong to the production of corn for
the market, but should rather be regarded as a means acces-
sory to the raising of cattle or to other branches of animal
production. A similar consideration recommends the setting
aside of the second of the two hay units, 12, wherein the opera-
tion of baling the hay is not taken in, although such is in
general required for making the product a marketable com-
modity. The duplicated units for apple trees, 1 and 2; car-
rots, 6 and 7, and wheat, 26 and 27, have been disposed of
by averaging the parallel figures in each of the three cases,
and therefore they appear in our table as single units.
HOW MANY MINUTES FOR ONE CENT?
Looking at the table presented in this paper, the reader will
observe that one line is devoted to each item of this tale in
figures; furthermore that each item refers to one of the arti-
cles selected by the Department from the field of agriculture
and is taken to constitute, by a given quantity, that which is
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HOW MUCH WORK IS NECESSARY?
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Digitized by VjOOQ IC
854 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
here called a unit. We have there, for instance, the unit 3, for
barley, 30 bushels (1 acre); again, the unit 17, for rice, 2,640
pounds, and the unit 19, for strawberries, 4,000 quarts. Now,
these unit quantities as adopted by the Department may be
well taken, if considered only from the commercial standpoint.
It is different for the wage-earning producer and proletarian
consumer. To let him know what the labor cost is in one
bushel of barley, or in one pound of rice, or one quart of
strawberries means not only to bring the whole matter nearer
home to him for a practical understanding, but comparisons
between the different labor cost items are facilitated by such
reduction of the quantity.
We may now be interested to learn how much labor cost
there is contained in one bushel of barley, one pound of rice,
and other items of daily use. The department's table informs
us that there is a labor cost equal to 2 hours 42.8 minutes time,
or $0.6020 money represented in 30 bushels of barley, and that
17 hours 2.5 minutes time or $1.0071 money are likewise ex-
pended in the production of 2,640 pounds of rice. Alongside
with this information derived from our official source we give
our reduced figures telling the reader that in 1 pound of rice
the labor cost amounts to 0.3873 minutes or 0.0381 cents.
Having once reached this stage in our presentation, it is almost
a matter of course for us that we now would like to know how
many minutes the laborers in this special branch of industry
are made to work for 1 cent.
How many minutes for 1 cent ? Information contributed by
ourselves answers this question.
The answer is, 10.1653 minutes.
To one cent 10 and about one-sixth of a minute, this is the
ratio of the specific labor cost in time to that in money on
the rice plantation.
In the series of our own ratio presentations there occurs
one case where the statement challenges objection. This re-
fers to unit 18, rye. Here the ratio of time to money presents
itself in such strikingly low a figure as 0.5689 minutes to one
cent. If there is a fault, and it is pretty sure there is one, it
is not ours. The error must lie in some of the fundamental
figures that we had to use in our computation, and however
sorry we may be for it, we cannot, in this instance, go behind
the records. The figures of only about half a minute to one
cent, if taken as the ratio of time to money in this case, would
imply an assertion not less astounding than this, that the
wages paid in the production of rye are so high as 1.7578 cents
for a minute's work, which is equivalent to $1.05 for one hour,
or over $12 per work day of twelve hours. Certainly, there
must be something wrong, either in the original information
received by the department or in its computations, and we
Digitized by VjOOQIC
HO W MUCH WORK IS N EC ESS A R Yf 865
must decline to accept the results obtained in this case. There-
fore the ratio figures regarding the rye unit, although inserted
in our table, have been eliminated in the process of taking the
average of the ratio column.
Exactly six, or only a fraction of a minute less or more, is
the ratio for the following ten items: Unit 15, peas, 5.7601
minutes ; units 6 and 7, carrots, 5.991 1 minutes ; unit 16, pota-
toes, 5.9999; unit 9, corn, 6.0 minutes; unit 10, seed cotton,
6.0; unit 14, onions, 6.0027; unit 23, Spanish leaf tobacco,
6.0418; unit 24, tomatoes, 6.5313 minutes; unit 4, beets, 6.61 19;
unit 25, turnips, 6.7432 minutes to 1 cent.
Seven or more minutes to 1 cent is the ratio of time to
money in five items ; these are :
Unit 22, leaf tobacco, 7.0091 minutes; unit 11, hay, 7.0405
minutes; unit 21, sweet potatoes, 9.7326 minutees; unit 20,
sitgar cane, 10.1538 minutes; unit 17, rice, 10.1653 minutes to
1 cent.
Ratios of less than five minutes to 1 cent are shown in but
five items, namely, those of broom corn, strawberries, oats,
apple trees, and barley. Of course, these comparatively low
rates inversely taken would indicate rates of wages of a com-
mensurately high standing. In some of these cases, however,
the fundamental results of the Department seem doubtful,
which is especially notable in the case of the barley item where
the time rate of 2.7045 minutes to 1 cent would mean a wage
rate of 0.3698 cent per 1 minute, or 22 and nearly one-fifth
of a cent per hour. But the possible amount of the error may
be of minor significance, and therefore we did not feel justified
in excluding these latter items from their range in computing
the average.
The average ratio of time to money is for the twenty-two
items considered 5.9179 minutes to 1 cent.
This is the last of our general results in regard to agricul-
ture. Herein the actual relation of time to money in the spe-
cific labor cost, as ascertained for each of those agricultural
products, has found a common expression as near exactness
as could possibly be made from the official statistics.
A TYPICAL CASE — WHEAT.
The Amount of the Aggregate Labor Cost Established by
Calculation and by Estimate,
For this purpose we take the case of wheat production, as
actually carried on in the far Western region by using the
best and most efficient agricultural machines and implements
of to-day, and taking as a basis for the computations to be
made the conditions on a 5,000-acre farm. The Department
of Labor has taken just the same course in that part of its in-
quiry where the labor cost of products made under the "ma-
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856 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
chine method" is considered ; the wheat units (26 and 27) hav-
ing been made in the year 1895-96 on a "bonanza farm" where
they used a six-gang-plow, each gang having four plows, each
plow cutting ten inches, with a seeder and harrow attached
to each gang, and all operated by a traction engine. Oi course,
also the steam harvester was employed there, a machine that,
after the cutting, threshes the grain in the field. Based on an
example like this, the rate of the specific labor cost, according
to our own calculations, represents to a rather satisfactory de-
gree the scale of efficiency reached in modern wheat produc-
tion, although some newer improvements have become known
since 1896.
These remarks will suffice to introduce the following table
which exhibits the result of the effort made to ascertain the
aggregate labor cost-in the case of wheat, in part by using
figures contained in the report of the Department of Labor,
and in part by estimates founded on other reliable informa-
tion and statistics.
WHEAT — SPECIFIC LABOR COST RAISED TO AGGREGATE
LABOR COST.
(By computations made on the basis of a farm comprising 5,000 acres and yielding an
average crop of 20 bushels per acre, or 100,000 per year.)
Note— 1. Where the sign * is attached to figures, these represent results of estimates.
2. The factor of motor power, steam or animal, is included in the specific labor
cost of wheat.
SPECIFIC LABOR COST OF
A bushel, 1 bushel,
Cents.
lilnutes.
Wheat
Seed Grain, one-twelfth of a bushel
Loading— transferring grain from storage bins to steamship. . . .
Unloading— transferring grain from canal boat to storage bins.
Railroad freight, 1000 miles; per ton per mile, 0.1 cent; 40 bush-
els to one ton
Fertilizer
Depreciation of machinery, implements, etc
Superintendence, bookkeeping, clerical labor, etc
Cost other than specified
Aggregate Labor Cost of Wheat
8.45
0.29
0.26
0.14
2.50
1.00*
2.00*
6.00*
1.00*
0.48
0.79
0.54
0.80
10.00*
4.00*
8.00*
12.00*
5.00*
16.68
50.06
As the reader will see, the time rate of the aggregate labor
cost of wheat presents itself by the figures of fifty and a very
► small fraction of one minute.
If we now, in order to have round figures for the conclud-
ing review which is to follow, add so much as ten minutes and
a quarter to the rate obtained, then there can certainly be no
doubt that the final result is considerably in excess of the
actual conditions in existence in up-to-date wheat produc-
tion. One hour per one bushel, as we now take it for argu-
ment's sake, means a proposition that may pass only on the
ground of being decidedly disadvantageous to the argument
we are going to submit.
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HO W MUCH WORK IS NECESSAR Yt 857
Well, let us now take it, that the time cost of one bushel of
wheat is as high as one hour per bushel. What does that
mean ?
For socialist society exportation will be a matter of de-
cidedly secondary consideration; first of all, the new common-
wealth will care for home production. There is no shadow of
contention about that. Now, the quantity needed for home
consumption is about 350,000,000 bushels a year. Further-
more, it is here to be noted that the number of persons actually
engaged in the production of this quantity of wheat, — small
farm owners, members of their families, and laborers, all in-
cluded — varies at present in the neighborhood of 1,000,000, and
some times exceeds this number. Let us now proceed from
these facts.
Henceforth, and with no better means of labor than are
already in use on the large farms in our Western states, social-
ism could accomplish, by an arrangement in the disposition of
farm land, and an organization of work in agriculture, the pro-
duction of the entire amount of wheat needed for home con-
sumption, 350,000,000 bushels, in a like or lesser number of
hours.
This is the first of our concluding propositions. Of course,
it stands or falls with the work of our calculations. We chal-
lenge contradiction from the professorial body-guard of cap-
italism.
Secondly — The task of furnishing 350,000,000 bushels of
wheat in the like number of hours will employ 1,000,000 per-
sons, that is, as the reader will remember, exactly the same
number as employed at present under capitalistic domination —
and these laboring forces will be needed for not more than
eighty-seven days a year, at a work day of four hours only.
Thirdly — Since eighty-seven days constitute but about the
fourth part of the year, we may take it that three-quarters of
the year these 1,000,000 persons, are not yet disposed of, and
hence are free for employment in other necessary and useful
occupations, subject to the direction of the commonwealth.
In fact, the strength of the working force required for cover-
ing the national demand for wheat, on the basis of the present
population, can be expressed in any one of the following
ways:
(a) As 1,000,000 persons working 87 days, 4 hours each, or,
(b) As 250,000 persons working 4 hours all the year through ;
of course, Sundays and holidays excepted, or,
(c) Again as 1,000,000 persons working 1 hour a day on every
work day of the year.
The last of these three expressions for one and the same
actual condition is the most simple and strikingly illustrative.
We are now going to extend this inquiry to the province of
Digitized by VjOOQIC
868 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
the manufacturing industries, presenting the conditions in ques-
tion as found in a few of the most typical and characteristic
branches.
One million persons one hour a day for wheat production!
This means that one hour's work per day of 50,000,000 adult
and able-bodied persons of this nation is sufficient to perform
all the work reasonably required, to satisfy the national demand
for all the products or services available from agriculture and
manufacture, transportation and distribution, and also of sci-
ence and art, — in one word, of all kinds of occupations that
are to furnish the means for sustaining, elevating and refining
life?
The gigantic apparatus of capitalist economy has reached a
stage where it is perfectly ripe for socialization. The economic
conditions preliminarily required are on hand for establish-
ing heaven on earth for all mankind. It is but a political pro-
vision that is yet to be supplied. This is especially true in
our own country. One hour workday will be not only a pos-
sibility but a sure feasibility as the normal quantity of work
required from every man and woman, if able to do some work.
Taking only the means of labor as applied at the present
stage of economic evolution, wherever enterprises are carried
on in the manner of progressive capitalism, and two, or two and
a half hours a day work of our nation's whole working force
would create wealth for all in abundance.
As individual property, machinery is to-day a curse to the
great majority ; so as common property it will become a bless-
ing to the entire human family.
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Women in Belgium
lUgust number of The International Socialist
I see mentioned the fact that the Belgian
is include women in their demand for univer-
rage, and this in spite of the ignorance that
still exists among Belgian women "and which is so great as
almost to pass belief on the part of American readers."
One may say that till last year there was no women's move-
ment existant in Belgium. There has been — there are still —
several "bourgeois" societies composed of women, desiring, in
principle, to alleviate the sufferings of their sex. These socie-
ties hold reunions from time to time, at which those women
who know anything about social questions are literally swamped
by the mass of those whose incompetence and ignorance defy
description. They have no fixed program, and although
there can be no doubt that amongst them there are noble-
minded women, only too desirous of doing something useful,
they have accomplished nothing, or next to nothing, and their
time is flittered away in personal dissensions.
The socialist party — as one united body — is, comparatively
speaking, a very young party (the "Parti Ouvier" was founded
in 1885), all its energies have been concentrated in the amelior-
ation of the life of the working man, in obtaining for him a
better economic and political standing. Indirectly, evidently,
this has been a distinct advantage to the working women too —
the affiliation of the working family to one of the socialist co-
operatives meaning cheaper bread, cheaper coal, etc., and
every member of a co-operative having a share in the profits.
But it is only now that the "Parti Ouvier," being established on
a very firm basis, now that it polls the maximum number of
votes possible with the present electioneering system, now that
its trade unions, its mutual societies, its co-operatives have
greatly developed that the more far-seeing socialists have be-
gun to understand that one of the great features of future pros-
perity will be the embodiment of women in the socialist move-
ment.
To understand this one must first of all keep in mind that
Belgium is a Catholic country, that the Roman Catholic re-
ligion is one of the great factors in national life. There is no
sort of compulsory education, schools conducted by nuns and
by priests being in the majority, especially in the rural dis-
tricts. This means that a very large proportion of the popula-
tion is kept in the most dire ignorance ; that superstition and
bigotry are inculcated into the minds of the young. The
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
360 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
men escape this baneful influence when their work takes them
into one of the industrial centers, but the women attached to
the place of their birth know no other influence. They are
pleased to be exploited by their employers because "women
have always had lower salaries than men" and if they are
worked to death and almost starved in this world, they will
be rewarded in the next. These are the sort of fallacies ex-
pounded to them by the priests. Of course all this again re-
acts on the man, the husband, the father. Say a workman
lives with his family in a rural district and goes to work all day
long in one of the industrial centers. (This is the rule in Bel-
gium, where distances are comparatively short and where
workmen's trains are numerous and very cheap). He has been
converted to socialism by his fellow workmen. He has be-
come a member of a socialist trades union; he attends social-
ist lectures, meetings, etc. His wife, of course, gets to know
this. She is terrified, having been told by the priests that the
socialists are devils. She consults her spiritual adviser, who
threatens both her husband and herself with all the tortures
of hell should the husband persist in his "iniquitous ways."
What is a wretched, bigoted creature to do? Either her tears
and her imprecations produce the desired effect — the man
wavers — he is making his wife miserable — there may be some
truth in what the priest says ; or else if he is intelligent and has
already become a conscious socialist his family life is more or
less at an end. His wife is left at home to her ignorance and
her superstition, whereas the husband makes use of all the
advantages that a socialist millieu offers to its members.
The same division takes place among ^ the children. The
girls remain under the clerical influence and follow their •
mother. The boys, if they become industrial workers, are
certain to be socialists. In parts of the country, the Flemish
provinces, two purely agricultural districts, both men and
women are completely (or almost completely ; for even in that
stronghold of clericalism socialist scouts have penetrated) under
the priests' thumbs.
As I have Said before, socialists are beginning to see that
for the advance of socialism in Belgium it has become all
important that the immense reactionary body formed by the
women should be gained. What is done by the men in social-
ist assemblies is undone by the women at home. In the lar^e
factory towns where both men and women are employed in
the mills and consequently where both sexes are found in the
socialist organizations, the movement is strong. Where the
women are under clerical influence, the socialist movement has
the greatest difficulty in implanting itself. It is certain that
it is only through socialism that women can obtain redress of
their many grievances. Of what use are legislative measures
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
WOMEN IN BEL GIUM 361
if the whole condition of women is based on injustice, if they
are considered as inferior beings? It is the whole economic
situation of women in society as it is to-day which must be
modified. The woman's movement must therefore be a social-
ist one. Woman must be by the side of man in the class war,
and must not be like an enemy in the opposite camp. In an-
other way, too, socialism can release women from the clerical
domination by giving them an ideal.
It is almost impossible to make a very poor and very ignor-
ant woman understand the advantages accruing to herself from
an economic change. But it is not difficult to raise her en-
thusiasm for an ideal of justice. Every one has in him the
thirst for an ideal. The poor women I am speaking of are
told of the delights of a hypothetical world to come. The
incense and the images in their places of worship appeal to
the higher side of their nature. How much more should all
the hidden possibilities in them vibrate when they are told of
the delights which doing their duty to their fellow-men and to
themselves can bring in this world and when they are made
acquainted with the noble and beautiful life which will come to
all in a socialistic state, — the socialists' heaven, and one that
will be realized, not one that is only promised and of whose
possibility and existence there are absolutely no proofs. In
the days of early Christianity women and men suffered the
most cruel tortures, not for any immediate advantage, but for
an ideal. In our time socialists are banished and imprisoned
for having preached their ideal. When women have once been
brought to understand the new ideal no power on earth will
ever be able to drive it out of their hearts and minds. This
is what the Belgian socialist party understand. About two
years ago a woman's league was formed at the Maison du
Peuple chiefly owing to the indefatigable energy of a noble
woman, Mile. Gatti de Gamond, who, after having for twenty-
five years directed a large girls' school, supported partly by
the government and partly by the city of Brussels, now devotes
her life to the woman's cause. She has just finished a tract on
female suffrage which will be published by the Parti Ouvrier.
She has commenced to give lectures throughout the country
and her natural ability and logical frame of thought have done
wonders for the cause. During the forthcoming campaign
for universal suffrage all the principal orators of the socialist
party have promised to explain at every meeting the necessity
for woman suffrage, and so although it may be a very long
time before women will be electors in Belgium, yet the move-
ment in their favor will cause them to awaken from their leth-
argy and to understand that resignation is not a virtue, but
that it is their duty to join the socialist movement with their
husbands and brothers.
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Civilization
Do you think it will go on forever?
The foul city spreading its ugly suburbs like an ink-blot over
the fresh green woods and meadows,
Its buildings climbing up to ten, twenty, thirty shapeless
stories,
Its lurid smoke smothering the blue sky ;
The mad rushing hither and thither, by steam and electricity,
as of insects on a stagnant pool, ever faster and faster ;
Forests falling in a day to fill the world with waste paper,
Presses turning out aimless books and magazines and news-
papers by the ton,
Factory chimneys poisoning the west wind with unnamed
stenches,
Dark pollution from chemical works and sewers silently suck-
ing up the limpid purity of our streams,
Squalid brick-yards eating like leprosy into the banks of the
river,
Coal mines belching forth black vomit over whole counties,
The endless labor of digging gold and silver out of their natural
deposits under the distant mountain and heaping them up
in unnatural and equally useless deposits under our side-
walks,
The raging whir of machinery forever whirling its tasteless,
shoddy, adulterated products into the laps of the idle,
Stalwart country folk, lured into overcrowded slums, to be
bleached and stifled and enervated in the slavery of dull
toil,
The army of tramps and unemployed swelling, suicides multi-
plying! starvation widening, in the wake of steam-yachts
and multi-millionaires,
Prisons, poor-houses, insane asylums, hospitals and armories
growing bigger and bigger;
And yet in all this wild, material maelstrom scarcely a glimmer
of art or beauty or dignity or repose or self-respect.
Do you think it can go on forever?
Do you think it ought to go on forever?
Ernest Crosby,
Author of "Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable."
8flB
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
$
BOOK REVIEWS
$
The Trust. William M. Collier. The Baker Taylor Company.
Cloth, 338 pp., $1.25.
It is seldom that a greater mixture of good and bad, false
and true, are to be found in a single book. The first portion
of the work is one of the best contributions yet made to the
study of the "trust problem. ,, He clearly recognizes and
points out the fact that trusts are a natural outgrowth of
competition, and sees the great economies which they furnish
in production. His paragraph showing how the circle of the
market has gradually enlarged side by side with the increased
size of the industrial unit is one of the best statements of these
facts yet printed, as the following quotation will show:
Page 44. "There has always been a tendency for industrial
organizations to increase in size. It is more marked to-day,
because invention and discovery have enlarged the field of
business, strengthened the competitors and intensified the com-
petition. The vastly improved means of travel, communica-
tion and transportation tend to build up trusts since they tend
to increase competition. When the market was limited by the
circle whose radius was the stage-route, competition was
bounded by that circle. Outside of it a maker, although his
cost of production was greater, could nevertheless find a mar-
ket and could sell his goods. The great expense of transpor-
tation by these primitive methods, when added to the cost of
production, often made it necessary for the cheap producer to
charge in the relatively distant market a price in excess of that
charged by some producer in that remote locality whose cost
of actual production was much greater. But transportation
has now become so much improved that each producer is the
active competitor of all others. When shoes were made by
hand and the stage was the means of transportation and com-
munication, my local shoe cobbler could charge me much more
than a cobbler in Syracuse twenty-five miles away. To-day if
my cobbler were to charge overmuch, I could buy from many
stores in my own city of Auburn, N. Y., shoes made at Lynn,
Mass., or Brockton, Mass., or at many other places hundreds
of miles away. Fifty years ago my local cobbler had hardly
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
864 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
a competitor. To-day he competes with all the great shoe fac-
tories throughout the entire country. To-day, to tell the
truth, my local cobbler is out of business as a cobbler. The
factory-made shoes were better and cheaper and we took our
trade from him."
He has gathered some interesting and convincing material
showing the presence of the trust movement in other coun-
tries, points out in an extremely clear manner the savings of
concentration and ridicules the movement to re-employ use-
less laborers.
Then he forgets all that he has ever said before and begins
to talk about "fair competition," "natural monopolies," and to
suggest "remedies" for what he has just shown was inevitable
and desirable. He suggests the tariff as a means of assistance
in solving a "problem" he has just shown to be international,
declares that "we can manufacture twice as much as we can
consume," and in short talks all the ridiculous bourgeois rot
that has been current for the last twenty years. It is a book
that is well worth any one's time to read if the proper parts
are skipped.
Plutocracy's Statistics. By H. L. Bliss. Chas. H. Kerr & Co.,
Chicago. Paper, 32pp, ten cents.
Mr. Bliss has become well known through his merciless crit-
icisms and exposures of the "official statistics" issued under
the supervision of Carroll D. Wright. In this work he ex-
poses the fallacy that child labor is decreasing or wages in-
creasing and also shows the fallacy of the government statis-
tics on prices. The pamphet makes very interesting reading
for those who are accustomed to accept the government stamp
as a guaranty of accuracy on things statistical.
Nequa, The Problem of the Ages, by Jack Adams. Equity
Publishing Company, Topeka, Kan. Paper, 387 pp., fifty
cents.
Here is a Utopia that is far above the average of its kind,
both in literary form and educational matter. Taken as a
/.hole the book is probably as good a guess as has yet been
made concerning the nature of the coming society. The story
is not simply a vehicle to carry an overload of sermons but has
a real interest in itself that holds attention to the end.
The Evolution of Immortality. By "Rosicruciae." Eulian
Publishing Company, Salem, Mass.
This is an expression of that general indefinite "psychial"
idea that is showing itself in such a multitude of forms at the
Digitized by VjOOQIC
BOOK RE VIE WS 865
present time. For those who are interested in such things
this book perhaps contains matter of importance. It is at
least difficult to disprove the claims of those who keep so com-
pletely outside the realm of the "knowable" and it is no less
difficult to intelligently criticise.
The Glorious House of Savoy, by Francis Sceusa. Co-opera-
tive Printing Works, Sydney, New South Wales. Paper,
24 pp.
A scathing arraignment of the Italian outrages which led
up to the assassination of King Humbert.
The following books were received too late for extended
reviews, but will be noticed at length later:
"Plain Talk in Psalm and Fable," by Ernest Crosby ; Small,
Maynard & Co.
"China's Only Hope," by Chang Chi Tung; Fleming H.
Revell Company.
"Newest England," by Henry Demarest Lloyd; Doubleday,
Page & Co.
AMONG THE PERIODICALS
No surer sign of the growing strength of socialism is seen
than in its increasing influence in the field of periodical litera-
ture. It will be the aim of this department to give each week
a very brief resume of the articles appearing in current periodi-
cals that are of especial interest to socialists, either because of
the point of view, the subject matter or the manner of treat-
ment.
The Cosmopolitan has an article on "What Communities
Lose by the Competitive System" that easily takes first rank
this month as being the most valuable article from a socialist
standpoint in American magazines. The article is one that re-
ceived a prize of two hundred dollars in a competitive contest
for the best article on that subject. It is a careful and elab-
orate study of the subject and contains a wealth of detailed
material of greatest value to socialist writers and speakers and
all who wish to be well informed on the current phases of
socialism.
The International Monthly, although but little over a year
old, has taken front rank among the impartial scientific period-
icals published in this country. The November issue has
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366 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
among other interesting articles a discussion of "Ruskin, Art
and Truth" by John LaFarge which serves in no small degree
to explain from the artist's point of view the weakness of Rus-
kin's entire philosophy. The impossibility of "absolute truth"
or its expression is shown and it is not hard to draw from this
article analogous conclusions as to the explanation of the
defects in Ruskin's economic philosophy. Other articles of*
interest are "Modern Sociology" by Franklin H. Giddings, and
"The Pacific Coast : A Psychological Study," by Josiah Royce.
The Quarterly Journal of Economics furnishes an excellent
example of the bankruptcy of brains to which the bourgeois
economists of America are reduced. Its 166 pages contain
little that may be given a more dignified title than "intellectual
gymnastics" save its bibliography and book reviews. Prof. J.
W. Jenks' discussion of "Trusts" is a reiteration of platitudes
that he has repeated on a half-dozen previous occasions. One
might pardon these calisthenics if they even succeeded in gain-
ing clear concepts of the subjects discussed, but where, as in
the example under consideration, the first forty-five pages are
filled with technical contortions over "Recent Discussion of the
Capital Concept" by Frank H. Fetter, and then in the same
number an article is admitted, "Enterprise and Profit" by Fred-
erick B. Hawley, who (p. 78) speaks of the laborer's overalls
and dinner-pail being capital, a depth of driveling inanity
is reached that speaks eloquently of the fearful decadence of
capitalist economic thought.
The Annales de Y Institut des Sciences Sociales contains one
of a most notable contribution to socialist and sociological
literature in Prof. Guillaume DeGreefs "Essais sur la Mon-
naie, le Credit et les Banques." It is practically an economic
history of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth century
from the socialist point of view. It would be well worth trans-
lating into English and it is hoped that some one may be found
to do the work.
L'Humanite Nouvelle, for November, contains an article on
"En Marche vers la Reaction" that gives an extremely inter-
esting view of present French politics. Kropotkine's autobiog-
raphy is also running through the current numbers of this
periodical.
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* SOCIALISM ABROAD *
It will be the aim of this department to so present the news
of the socialist movement in each country that the possessor of
a file of The Review will have a condensed connected history
of the socialist movement of the world. Owing to the stupen-
dous amount of work and extensive facilities necessary for the
proper accomplishment of this end we have not thought it wise
to attempt such a department before, and even now we feel
that only a beginning has been made which will require very
much improvement in future numbers.
ENGLAND.
As almost all of our readers know by this time the English
elections like those of America have been a victory for the
large capitalists against the small ones. The Liberals have
been overwhelmingly defeated and the ground thus cleared
for a strong, clear, revolutionary socialist movement.
By holding the election just before a new list of electors was
compiled the Conservatives succeeded in disfranchising more
Englishmen than the Boers ever disfranchised outlanders. This
fell somewhat heavy on the socialists as there is always a larger
percentage of the younger voters in the socialist ranks than
those of greater age- The socialists were also handicapped by
other features of the election law, which by a property qualifica-
tion disfranchised many thousands of laborers. Still more im-
portant is the provision of the law that compels the candidates
or the parties they represent to bear the election expenses, in-
cluding the expenses for polling, counting and returning the
vote. Just how heavy a burden this is is seen from the fact
that in the sixteen districts in which the socialists had candi-
dates these expenses varied from $550 to $1,650, with a total
of over $15,000. This had to be shared among the candidates
or parties according to the number of contestants for the seat,
so that the socialist had always to bear from one-half to one-
third of these sums before they could have a cent for agitation
purposes. This also compelled them to refrain from nominat-
or
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368 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
ing candidates in any districts where they were not exception-
ally strong, and it thus came about that no record could be
secured of the socialist vote in 553 out of 669 districts.
Hence the English comrades are to be congratulated that
in these sixteen districts they succeed in casting 50,624 votes
and electing one member (Keir Hardie) to Parliament. As
the total vote polled was only 3,482,234, it will be seen that
socialism has secured a pretty strong hold in England, not-
withstanding the many difficulties it has had to contend with.
In the London borough and town council elections the
socialists made some important gains and elected a number of
officers. Unfortunate Will Thorne was defeated for re-elec-
tion by a vote of 1,082 to 1,007.
FRANCE.
The French socialist parties seem to be again split by internal
dissensions. Notwithstanding the recent attempt at a unity
convention, those who have been most determined in their
opposition to the entrance of Millerand into the cabinet have
issued a call for a new "socialist unity" which shall exclude
the "ministerialists." This division seems to have spread even
into the parliamentary group, which until now has always acted
as a unit, whatever quarrels might be existing outside. This
was shown at the opening of the Chamber of Deputies, where
Viviani made a speech indorsing the course of Millerand and
was immediately followed by Vailliant with a notice that his
division would no longer support the ministry.
In this contest both sides claim to have been indorsed by
the International Congress. The organ of the Parti Ourvier, or
"Guesdists," Le Socialiste, declares that "not only the Kautsky
resolution, in spite of its conciliating expressions, is wholly a
condemnation of their ministerial policy, but the resolutions
concerning alliances with bourgeois parties, colonial politics,
so-called 'municipal socialism/ universal peace, general strike,
constitute a defeat for them." On the other hand the "minis-
terialists" supported these resolutions (or some of them at least)
and claim them as an endorsement of their position. Kautsky
himself, in a recent article in the Neul Zeit, declares himself
very decidedly against Millerand and his tactics.
Le Mouvemente Socialiste, which claims to take a purely
neutral ground as a scientific review, but which is sometimes
accused by the "Parti Ouvrier" as inclining toward the "minis-
terialists," after denouncing the extremists of both sides, says :
"At this moment it is neither Guesde nor Millerand who
represents the central tendencies (les tendances moyennes) of
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SOCIALISM ABROAD 369
French socialism. If reference is had to the general direction
taken by the autonomous federations, which are perhaps the
only ones who in the present crisis have acted spontaneously
and freely, it is seen that the mass of our movement has held
itself equally distant from sectarian dogmatism and corrupt
empiricism. .. .In the chaos of our debates it is natural that
these extreme tendencies should seem to have divided French
socialism under the names they have respectively taken. But
this is only an appearance. The militants of the provinces,
speaking generally, do not expect a socialist society to come
all at once by some act of Providence as the revolutionism of
Guesde would preach to them. But they know equally well
that if the social transformation they seek may only be ob-
tained at the price of a long and carefully planned work of
organization and preparation, it is necessary to guard against
all weakening or deviation in the course of this practical action.
For the rest, once that socialist unity is realized, these two
tendencies, now exaggerated because they are in opposition,
will become counterpoises; and losing the grotesque form
they now have, will draw closer to the general position of the
great mass. This is why unity ought to be realized at any
cost with the least possible delay; unity of organization will
create unity of tendencies."
The Bulletin de L'Office de Travail gives a resume of strikes
in France during the last year. From this it appears that in
the month of September last there were 76 different strikes.
In 67 of these the number of strikers engaged was known and
reached a total of 14,230. In the entire year of 1899 there
were 740 strikes, including 176,826, and the total days lost were
3,350,734. Furthermore for the ten years from 1890 to 1899
inclusive there have been 4,210 strikes, involving 924,486 strik-
ers and a loss of 15,021,184 days work.
HOLLAND.
The following report is based largely on an article in Le
Mouvement Socialiste by W. H. Vliegen.
Capitalism developed very early in Holland, and with it came
the beginnings of socialism, but the labor movement actually
first took form with the International. After the dissolution
of the International the Algemeen Nederlandsch Werklieden-
verbond (General Federation of Netherland Laborers was
formed with many Social Democrats in its ranks, but it soon
ceased to be socialist, and its president is now a Liberal mem-
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870 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
ber of the legislative chamberand most of its members are rad-
ical politicians and opponents of socialism.
July 7, 1878, the socialist members of this organization
founded the first Social Democratic Association, with a tailor,
H. Gerhard, as its principal member. Shortly afterwards
Domela Nieuwenhuis, a Lutheran minister at The Hague,
joined the party and founded the first socialist paper, — Recht
voor Allen. He was a man of independent wealth and an ora-
tor and writer of ability and soon became the foremost social-
ist propagandist.
The party took up the agitation for universal suffrage and
apparently grew with great rapidity. But many of its new
members were not socialists, but advocates of violence and
anarchy. These began to incite the laborers, who. did not yet
understand socialism, and the whole movement culminated in
a police riot and ridiculous fiasco July 26, 1886. A long period
of reaction followed. Domela Nieuwenhuis was imprisoned
and all socialist activity suppressed.
Some time afterwards the electorate was somewhat extended
and Nieuwenhuis was elected to Parliament. While here he
made almost no reference to socialism, but busied himself
with the merest palliative reforms. This led to a strong oppo-
sition to him, not only in Holland, but throughout the inter-
national socialist movement. The result was that in a short
time he came out in opposition to all parliamentary action and
declared himself for the universal strike and violent revolution.
Then followed a long, painful and disgraceful fight between
the socialists and the anarchists under Nieuwenhuis. In Aug-
ust 1894 the Socialdemocratische Arbeiterpartij was organized,
and little by little the forces of anarchy began to fade away until
in 1898 the fifty-two anarchist sections had dwindled to ten,
while the socialist forces had grown to a powerful army.
Finally during last June, anarchy having been practically
crushed out of existence, the remnant of what was once the
anarchist organization joined the socialists, forming one power-
ful united movement. Since then they have gained a number
of local victories. They now have a majority on the municipal
councils of Utrecht, Gronigen and Haarlem. The party has
once more taken up the long-discarded struggle for universal
suffrage and now look forward to an early victory.
BELGIUM.
Le Peuple is now filled with long lists of meetings and ac-
counts of demonstrations for universal suffrage upon which
the Belgian socialists are now concentrating their strength.
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SOCIALISM ABROAD 871
Mile. I. Gatti de Gamond, Emile Vandervelde and other speak-
ers and writers are devoting all their energies to the work of
organization and agitation to secure this end. What makes
their tasks especially difficult is that they are making their
demand with no distinction as to sex. Here, as in England and
America, the Liberal party is disappearing and the line is being
drawn between capitalists and laborers on the political field.
The Vooruit, the great co-operative of Ghent, has just been
very much enlarged. A department store has been added and
$8,000 has been expended in the purchase of an adjoining build-
ing which is to be remodeled and fitted up as a printing estab-
lishment. This printing plant will issue the daily Vooruit and
will have complete telegraphic and telephonic service, making
it the leading daily of the city.
GERMANY-
The special election for the seat in the Reichstag made va-
cant by the death of Liebknecht was a brilliant socialist vic-
tory. While the socialists were certain of the seat, they were
scarcely prepared to greatly increase their vote and secure so
overwhelming a majority as was actually received. The follow-
ing shows the actual vote cast, Herr Ledebour being the Social
Democratic candidate :
Social Democrat, 53,896
Conservative 10,490
All other parties 1,422
The socialists won a seat in the Diet of Coburg for the first
time last month. — Herr Pens, another Social Democratic can-
didate to the Reichstag, was recently elected from the very
heart of the rural Brandenburg district. — In the Thuringian
States and Wurtemburg a number of socialists have recently
been elected to local legislative bodies.
At Gotha the socialists have managed to secure ten out
of nineteen seats in the local parliament. This has been a
work of some difficulty, as the members of that body are elected
indirectly.
A recent inquiry has brought out the fact that outside of the
factories there are employed in German industries 532,283 chil-
dren under fourteen years of age. The wages varied from ten
to sixteen cents a day.
Trade is poorer than one year ago and the number of un-
employed larger. The employes of the Krupp works have
just had their wages reduced 5 per cent.
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872 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
ITALY.
The Italian socialists are congratulating themselves upon
their recent triumph over a Neapolitan political "boss." Alber-
to Casalle has for years had despotic control over everything
political in Naples. Even the mayor held office only by his
sufferance and he had a system of blackmail in operation that
would have done credit to Tammany Hall. Some time ago
"La Propaganda," the socialist paper recently established in
Naples, took occasion to expose some of his work, whereupon
he sued them for libel. In the resulting trial the rottenness
of Casalle's schemes was exposed to such an extent that in
spite of all he could do his power is broken and several of
the city officers have been forced to resign.
AUSTRIA.
No definite reports as yet have been received concerning the
elections which are being held in Austria, but the correspondent
of the Berlin Vorwaerts states that the outrages at the present
election are even worse than at the election of 1897. The fact
that at that election one Social Democrat was elected and that
candidates have now been nominated in other districts have
led the officials to commit still greater outrages. From all
parts of the country comes reports that those communal rep-
resentatives who are laborers were not permitted to enter the
polling places. In Dumbrowa the laborers were told by the
government officials that the whole matter was one which did
not concern them. In Michalowice the names of 300 voters
who voted in 1897 were peremptorily struck from the list of
voters. In Galicia the Poles and Ruthenians have nominated
thirteen candidates. The following dispatch by the Associated
Press confirms these statements:
"Vienna, Nov. 8. — Intimidation at the polls caused a fierce
riot at Siebor, in Galicia, yesterday. The election of deputies
to the Austrian Reichsrath was in progress. The prefect
placed the gendarmerie of the town about the polling place,
with orders to arrest all who voted for the Democratic candi-
dates. After a number of arrests had been made the popu-
lace stormed the voting offices, disabled the gendarmes,
smashed in the ballot boxes and set fire to the buildings.
"Afterward they caught the prefect, stripped and beat him
and drove him out of town.
"Great socialist gains are reported in the industrial dis-
tricts."
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THE WORLD OF LABOR
By Max S. Hayes
HE American Federation of Labor meets in its twen-
tieth annual convention in Louisville, Ky., Dec. 3.
In point of attendance of delegates and members
represented it will be the largest congress ever held
by that body, and some important questions will come up for
consideration. Disputes between various trades will consume
much of the time of the convention. The woodworking and
the iron crafts are having much difficulty, owing to the sub-
division of their trades by machinery and new methods of pro-
duction, in fixing their jurisdiction, and considerable jealousy
exists between several of the larger bodies, charges of en-
croachment of one organization upon another being apparently
on the increase. The printers and machinists and the brewers
and engineers and firemen's controversies will undoubtedly re-
ceive further attention. Political questions will also come in
for much discussion. The legislative committee's poor show-
ing in obtaining the passage of labor bills in Congress has
caused wide comment, and the opinion is gaining ground that
it is a waste of time and money to solicit the present capital-
istic legislative bodies to enact palliative laws. The socialists
will come forward with a number of resolutions that they will
attempt to have adopted to place the Federation in line with
the more progressive labor bodies of Europe and even Canada,
while the trust question, ship subsidies and other matters will
open the gates for a flood of oratory such as the land of the
colonels has never before known. Rumors are flying about
thick and fast that quite a few changes will be made in the
present executive council. A New York sensational daily
paper charges that certain political interests are conspiring
to use President Mitchell, of the miners, to encompass the
defeat of Samuel Gompers, the present incumbent, and a
counter-charge is made that the rumor was set afloat to create
sympathy for Mr. Gompers. First Vice-President P. J. Mc-
Guire will not be a delegate this year, and unless all precedents
are disregarded he will not be a member of the new council.
Sixth Vice-President Thomas I. Kidd is understood as desiring
to retire, and several of the larger organizations threaten to
878
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874 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
go after the scalp of "Third Vice-President James O'Connell.
A brief synopsis of the convention's important transactions
will appear in next month's Review.
In September the A. F. of L. chartered one national union,
one state branch, three city central bodies and thirty-one local
unions, aside from the locals chartered by national trade or-
ganizations. The laundry workers organized a national body
at a convention held in Troy, N. Y., November 12, and the
lathers held their first annual convention in Cleveland, No-
vember 12. The seamen convened in Boston, November 16,
and the butchers meet in Cleveland December 3. The miners
assemble in Indianapolis on January 21, and there is already
much discussion on regarding the future course of that body
and the probable composition of the incoming administration.
— 1 —
A tremendous economic revolution is promised in the near
future for the industrial world. Thomas A. Edison, the "elec-
trical wizard," is busy day and night in his wonderful labora-
tory at Orange, N. J., perfecting his plan to utilize all the
energy stored in coal. At present 90 per cent and more of
this energy is lost in the process of combustion — carried off
in the form of smoke and gases through the chimneys of fac-
tories and the smokestacks of motor engines. Mr. Edison's
invention aims to control the full energy of coal by means of
compressed air, heated to about 450 degrees Fahrenheit, and,
if successful, will solve a problem which for years has occu-
pied the attention of scientists the world over. By this means
it is claimed that power enough could be extracted from a
pound or two of coal to carry a man around the world. It
would revolutionize motive power on land and sea, cutting
down the cost of operation to figures undreamed of by the
most hopeful economist. Mr. Edison has perfected his inven-
tion, insofar as heating compressed air is concerned, to a point
where its potency is doubled and the volume of coal consumed
is minimized. This of itself is a notable achievement, and
already the officials of a street railroad in Orange are nego-
tiating to utilize the invention in heating their cars this win-
ter. Mr. Edison has also applied his compressed air to several
steam drills and one engine with splendid results. It is re-
ported that the revolutionary idea which promises to work
economic wonders in this new device was suggested to Mr.
Edison by a little Chicago foot-warmer. The army of the
unemployed is destined to grow into many more millions in
number when this marvelous new device is completed.
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THE WORLD OF LABOR 875
Besides the socialist publications mentioned in the "Socialist
Campaign Book," the following new recruits must be added
to the list: The Islander, Windby Island, Puget Sound; the
Citizen, formerly a Bryan paper at Ardmore, I. T., has changed
its name to the Social Democrat and come out for socialism;
Work and Study, Berrien Springs, Mich.; Central Missouri
Push, California, Mo.; Utah Socialist, Salt Lake City, Utah;
Graham Gem, Hill City, Kan., and People's Press, Albany,
Ore., both former Bryan papers.
The compromising of the miners' strike in the hard coal
region of Pennsylvania on an increase of 10 cents a ton, and
the immediate advance of coal 50 cents a ton by the trust, has
caused no end of discussion in labor circles. It was at first
thought that the people would only be compelled to pay the
increase of 50 cents a ton until the barons had cleaned up
enough to pay the losses they sustained during the strike,
but such is not the case, as a New York financial organ says
that at a meeting in that city the barons took action that will
make the advance permanent. It is declared by some that
the coal capitalists, besides needing the money, forced up the
price of coal "to teach the people a lesson" for sympathizing
with the miners, and also to make unionism obnoxious. Howso-
ever that may be, the people, the voters who have just finished
casting their ballots for private monopolization of mines, may
feel assured that the mine owners wil not squander the extra
50 cents gained on each ton in a reckless manner (as the
miners would no doubt do in "living right"). Mr. Morgan
is saving up his half dollars for the purpose of perfecting the
machinery of several other trusts in order that he may intro-
duce "stable prices" in other industries, and several of his
colleagues are building more colleges and churches.
New York financial organs quote figures to show that imme-
diately folowing election stock in trusts in which Mr. John D.
Rockefeller is interested increased in value the enormous sum
of $27,345,000 in two days, the Standard Oil trust alone clear-
ing $13*000,000 during that time. The Standard has already
declared dividends this year amounting to over $67,000,000,
and it is figured that its "earnings" this year will be about 100
per cent of its present capitalization. Besides, its stock, valued
at $100 per share, is likely to be worth ten times that amount
in the near future. The enormous income enjoyed by Mr.
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876 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
Rockefeller enables him to grab stocks and bonds of other
industries almost at will.
The would-be trust-smashers of the South are rapidly chang-
ing their tune. The Bourbon rice-growers have just formed
a combnie which has been financed by the Vanderbilts. The
capitalization is $15,000,000 and the object of the new octopus
is to enforce "stability of prices/' the industry of rice-growing
having been "demoralized" by sharp competition, which means
that consumers will be called upon to yield more of the coin
of the realm if they want to eat rice. — A $25,000,000 cattle trust
is being organized in Texas. Mr. Rockefeller is to be the
financial power. — The salt trust, another Rockefeller pet, has
more than doubled the price of salt. — A general rise in meat,
butter, eggs and other necessities was announced a few days
after the polls closed. We must have prices. Then well all
get rich.
The striking woodworkers of the Pacific coast are reported
as gaining their demand for the eight-hour day. — Cigarmakers'
strike is off in some of the New York shops. — The desperate
battle between the molders of Cleveland and the Foundrymen's
National Association is still on, with no indication of an early
settlement. The" fight has already cost three lives and hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars. — The shorter workday of the
machinists has gone into effect pretty nearly all over the coun-
try. — Garment workers surrendered jurisdiction over shirt and
waist makers and the latter formed a national union.
A. W. Puttee, the progressive labor member of the Can-
dian Parliament, has been re-elected in the Winnipeg district
by an increased majority. — In the recent national election the
Independent Labor party, though but organized a few weeks,
polled a large vote in some districts, and the Canadian labor-
ites are enthusiastically predicting victory in the near future.
The Polish socialist organizations, which formerly supported
the DeLeon S. L. P., recently held a convention in Buffalo and
voted to support the Social Democratic party and to form an
independent alliance.
The iron-workers are having their "full dinner pails" tam-
pered with. It is announced that the National Steel trust will
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THE WORLD OF LABOR 877
hack into wages from 20 to 60 per cent, and that the Tin Plate
trust will cut off an 8 per cent chunk. Mills in Pennsylvania
are cutting puddlers from $4.25 to $3.00 a ton and muck roll
hands proportionately. The puddlers declare they won't stand
for a reduction of over one-quarter of their full dinner buckets,
but the bosses claim the cut is general and must be made be-
cause of the low price of bar iron. The iron-workers are
among the most stubborn upholders of the capitalistic system.
They don't want to hear anything about socialism. They vote
for "prosperity" and "protection" every time they have the
opportunity. They are getting what they vote for.
Postoffice employes are organizing and applying for charter
from the A. F. L. They claim the eight-hour law is being
constantly violated by officials, and they also want a reform in
the matter of making promotions and other grievances ad-
justed. A Washington employe informs the writer that there
seems to be a conspiracy on among certain interests to secure
the repeal of the eight-hour law.
Pennsylvania courts decide that the law prohibiting em-
ployers from discharging workers because they belong to
unions is unconstitutional. — United States Circuit Court at
Little Rock, Ark., issued a decree forbidding striking street
railway employes from wearing union buttons or badges.
— 1 —
Printers may soon take a referendum vote on the question
of severing all connection with political parties of the capitalist
class, thirty-six local unions having endorsed the proposition
to put the matter to a vote, fifty endorsements being needed. —
Cigarmakers are taking referendum vote on nominating and
electing officers. The race for president will be between
George W. Perkins, the present incumbent, and J. Mahlon
Barnes, the brilliant young Philadelphia Social Democrat.
— 1 —
The American Steel and Wire Trust is reaching out and
attempting to absorb the powerful Tennessee Coal and Iron
Company and the mills of Alabama.
Many new locals have been formed and joined the Social
Democratic party during the past few months, according to
National Secretary Butscner. — In December the municipal elec-
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878 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
tions occur in Massachusetts, where the S. D. P. made a splen-
did increase in November, and the old parties are leaving no
stone unturned to defeat the socialists. In Haverhill the hard-
est battle will take place, as the Republicans, Democrats and
Prohibitionists have combined. An appeal for financial aid has
been sent out by the S. D. P., and all donations should be sent
to William Mailly, Gillman block, Haverhill, Mass. — In other
states the S. D. P. is also actively preparing to carry on an
aggressive educational campaign until the polls close in the
spring elections.
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SOME COLOSSAL LYING
It is now definitely announced that the United States has
decided to join in with the "European concert" in the parti-
tioning of China. Here ends, for the present, one of the most
elaborate and comprehensive examples of national lying and
hypocrisy offered by history. When Cuba had been suffering
for fifty years and the United States army and warships had
been used repeatedly to stop and severely punish all those who
dared attempt to assist her, it was suddenly discovered by our
capitalist classes that they needed new markets, and at once
they set their "yellow press" in operation on the woes of Cuba.
In preparation for the deliverance of Cuba they sent a captain
with one ship to Havana and an admiral with a whole fleet
to Hongkong. Then when Manila was taken while "freeing
Cuba," all the agencies by which public opinion is made de-
clared that it was only for the purpose of assisting the brave
and noble Filipino patriots to throw off the hated yoke of
Spain. But when the treaty of peace was signed it was found
that the United States had paid $20,000,000 for the privilege
of using that yoke herself and the government of this country
proceeded at once to fit the aforesaid yoke still closer around
the necks of the Filipino patriots, who had now become a lot
of disreputable Tagal savages, according to these same makers
of public opinion. Then it was found that the possession (!)
of the Philippine Islanders enabled our capitalist rulers to be-
come mixed up in the Chinese question. So the engines of
public opinion were again set in motion and this country felt
a "thrill of horror" play up and down its backbone as the press
published sections from "Fox's Book of Martyrs" as original
telegraphic descriptions of the tortures being inflicted on the
Christians in China. The United States troops now became
part of the "European concert" (where did the Monroe doc-
trine go?) and United States soldiers were among the first
to enter Pekin and to find that the much-tortured and many-
times massacred missionaries were still in pretty good health.
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880 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIS7 REVIEW
Then began a series of outrages, murders and tortures that
might have fully justified all the previous descriptions of sup-
posed Chinese crimes. It was simply one more instance of
the bourgeoisie imputing their own crimes to those they wished
to destroy. During all this time we were repeatedly assured
by the mouthpieces of capitalism that the United States was
in China only to protect the missionaries and to "defend the
integrity of the Chinese empire." Under no conditions would
she consent to a partitioning of the Flowery Kingdom. This
position was given an appearance of seeming sincerity by the
fact that the United States having the best exploited laborers
in the world was able to undersell all the other nations any-
how, and hence an "open door" would be more to her advan-
tage than to that of any other set of capitalists. But it seems
that either the other members of the "gang" refused to "stand
for" this move or else, as seems much more probable, this was
only another case of lying, for now the word comes that the
United States has selected Amoy as its port and is busy stak-
ing out the boundaries of its section of the Chinese pie. This
brings the story down to date save that no discussion of the
lying and hypocrisy of this period would be complete without
some reference to the gigantic fraud of the "Anti-imperialist"
Democratic campaign. From one end of America to the other
one portion of the plutocratic press declared itself as bitterly
opposed to expansion and insisted that its instant check-
ing was the "paramount issue" upon which the laborers of
America should divide. Then on the very morning after elec-
tion, before the votes were all counted or the returns all in, these
same papers were out shouting for expansion and declaring that
the Democratic party had made a mistake in ever opposing it.
As one reads over this record of the most colossal mass of
lying, trickery and hypocrisy by which the American nation
has been befuddled, deceived and enslaved he cannot but say
"How long, O Lord, how long shall these things be !"
THE RECENT ELECTION
It is still impossible to give complete and accurate returns
of the socialist vote at the recent elections, but enough is now
known to make it certain that the vote of the Social Demo-
cratic party will be somewhere near 150,000, while that of the
DeLeonite Socialist Labor party will be about 25,000. This
is only the vote that is actually counted and turned in by the
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDITORIAL 881
recording officers, while from almost every city in America and
from nearly every precinct in the great cities comes reports
of uncounted and unrecorded votes. So it is probable that
the actual vote cast exceeded 200,000. This means that the
socialist vote has increased between three and five-fold since
1896. But it is not in the increase of the purely socialist vote
alone that socialists find reason for encouragement. A new
arrangement is being forced in political lines by the new eco-
nomic developments that is bringing the class struggle into
political divisions. The Populist party is gone — the Democratic
party is being "reorganized" to "rid it of undesirable radical
elements," and the Republican party has thrown down all dis-
guise and openly champions the cause of concentrated plutoc-
tacy- This serving of a writ of ejectment by the old political
parties on all persons not willing to accept the whole program
of capitalism has created a great body of "unattached" individ-
uals among whom the socialist propaganda is making rapid
headway. As many socialist writers have seen, the greatest
danger to an intelligent social development in this country lies
in the possibility that this incoherent floating mass of discon-
tented may find some common points of confusion around
which they can rally in support of some "leader" and thus give
another opportunity to side-track political development into
useless channels. But there seems to be every sign that before'
this can take place the socialists will rise to the opportunity
confronting them and, uniting in one strong harmonious party,
absorb and direct in an intelligent manner these new and
mighty energies that are coming to it.
From the beginning of the International Socialist Review to
the present the entire aim of the management has been to make
each number superior to all previous numbers. We have had
and still have plans for extensive improvements, and shall put
them in operation as fast as circumstances permit. We feel
that with the present number an advance has been made in the
opening of the most complete summary of news of the inter-
national movement ever attempted in any socialist periodical
in any country. With forthcoming issues this department will
be very greatly strengthened and improved. With the Janu-
ary number a most significant advance will be made. This is
the new department edited by Prof. George D. Herron. This
will really mean almost a new era in the growth of The Review,
as from now on this will be positively the only periodical with
which Prof. Herron will be connected in any way or to which
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
889 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST REVIE W
he will regularly contribute. He will bring with him an able
corp of writers, who, with those already enlisted, will make The
Review one of the foremost publications of this country. In
all these endeavors for improvement the management of The
Review finds itself sadly handicapped for lack of capital- Start-
ing with barely five hundred dollars, we feel that the results so
far accomplished are little less than marvelous. Now if our
present subscribers will but assist us during the next month
by securing all the new subscribers possible within the next
four weeks we can enter the new year wi*h a magazine of
which every socialist in Chicago may well be proud. When the
circulation gets a trifle larger than now, it will be possible to
enter the field of advertising profitably. That will mean that
new and paid regular foreign correspondents can be secured,
that expert reporters can be hired who will visit scenes of in-
dustrial disturbance or localities and industries of interest to
socialists, and can present studies of local conditions of the
greatest value for socialist education and propaganda. Every
dollar that comes in for The Review will always be used in
making a better magazine and increasing its circulation. No
dividends will ever be declared on the capital stock of the com-
pany and no fancy salaries paid its officers. Its books are open
at all times to those who wish to know its ccttdition. Now,
will not every one who reads this make one grand, tremendous
effort to send in a large club of subscribers before the January
number is issued ? Do so and we shall begin the new year with
the best socialist magazine in the world.
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
The International Party.
French Words by Eugene Pottieb. Translated by Charles H. Kerb.
iHim
1. A- rise, ye pris'ners of star- va -tion ! A - rise, ye wretched of the earth,
2. We want no condescending sav-iors, To rule us from a judgment hall,
For justice thunders con-dem-na- tion, A bet-ter world's in birth.
We workers ask not for their fa - vors; Let us con - suit for all.
i^fftrm^tmf^rf^ft
$&Hr$UU
No more tradition's chains shall bind us, Arise, ye slaves ! no more in thrall !
Tomake the thief disgorge his boo ty, To free the spir - it from its cell,
The earth shall rise on new foundations, We have been naught, we shall be^
We must ourselves decide our du - ty, We must de-cide and do it w^p.
Refbaih.
&4&-J \ jj\j\ ■^J=mhrH4d
Tte the fl - nal con - flict. Let each stand in his place,
(Tett la Ivt • te jL - na - le Chrou-^pons-nous et dc - main,
t ^l^nm ^^m
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
The International Party. Concluded.
^-4 — . ■ 1-p.i *■
The In - ter - na - tional Par - ty Shall be the hu - man race.
Vln-ter - na - tio na - le Se - ra le genre hu -main!
g
&f&
-&—%
feg
2z:
m
=Ftf
^ u
fl i\ t \i i ic^ -fe^^H r- ^ ^i
*Tis the fl - nal con - fliot, Let each stand in his place,
(Test la lut - te ft - na - le, Qrou^pon+noua et de - main,
^^ i fipjijjj^^^gp
The In - ter-na - tional Par
Vin-ter - na -tlo - na
ty Shall be the hu - man race,
le Se - ra le genre hu-mainl
W&
=t=F
jl
Sf
8
The law oppresses us and tricks us,
Taxation drains the victim's blood;
The rich are free from obligations,
The laws the poor delude.
Too long we've lanqulshed in subjection,
Equality has other laws:
"No rights," says she, without their duties,
No claims on equals without cause."
4
Behold them seated in their glory,
The kings of mine and rail and soil !
What have you read in all their story,
But how they plundered toil?
Fruits of the people's work are buried
In the strong coffers of a few;
In voting for their restitution
The men will only ask their due.
5
Toilers from shops and fields united,
The party we of ail who work;
The earth belongs to us the people,
No room here for the shirk.
How many on our flesh have fattened!
But if the noisome birds of prey
Shall vanish from the sky some morning,
The blessed sunlight still will stay.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
T55 INTERNATIONAL
SOCIALIST REVIEW
Vol. I JANUARY, igoi No. 7
The Present Moral Conflict
I.
|S life worth living ? If so, what quality of conduct makes
life most worth ? What shall we be and do in order to
realize the most abundant life? What is the highest
good? How shall this highest good be attained?
These are questions as old as the reflective intelligence
of man. And during the long past ages of the race
men have ever sought to solve these deepest problems of
human existence. To the solution of these problems, the greatest
minds and characters of history have devoted themselves, and
out of their conclusions have arisen schools of philosophy, cults,
and religions. To meet these supreme issues of life Moses and
Jesus taught ; and Calvin and Wesley expounded ; and Kant and
Spencer enunciated their various doctrines. It is in the answer to
these soul demands that we find our codes of morals and systems
of ethics. •
But the environment of man grows and changes, and human
life evolves; thus each new age presents a new man under new
conditions. And to this man, modified by the best and the worst
through which he has passed, now living in a changed environ-
ment, the old problems are pressed home again for solution.
Hence every age, period 1 , and generation should have and must
have its own answer to the old, old questions. The best of the old
answers suffice not. They were uttered under old conditions to
less evolved men. Change in the statement of truth and the cor-
responding change in conduct and in character must come, or men
will seek to content themselves with half-truths, and will give
themselves over to lies and hypocrisy.
This demand for a new answer to an old problem is especially
felt in epochal times of social transition, such as the time of the
886
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886 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
appearance of Jesus, the Renaissance, and the revolutionary period
of the last century. The hour of transition from old to new in any
case is always trying to the intellect and to the soul. Men are then
in a painful struggle for freedom. A moral conflict is precipitated.
The intellect seeks to interpret the significance of the new environ-
ment and to make the new statement of truth. The soul seeks to
live the new quality of life which the new environment demands.
And the process of adaptation is one of comparative pain. Ear-
nest men feel and know that they cannot abandon the permanent
and vital in the old, and yet they must be true to the living God,
the present good, instead of being the echoists and parrots of
dead men's interpretations and the victims of conventional and
lifeless forms of earlier good.
Besides this inner conflict in such times of transition there is
always an outer struggle. Some false ecclesiastical, political or so-
cial system sits on the back of the people. It holds them bound
in an unyielding embrace. It sneers in hollow mockery at the
new moral convictions of men, and becomes defiant, because, in-
deed, it is upheld as sacred and divine by the existing religion
and its priests. It boasts of its past record and hoary age, and de-
mands respect which it fails to inspire. Thus some form of re-
ligion and some code of morals has ever been the bulwark of des-
potism, feudalism, slavery, the divine rights of kings, and the di-
vine right of property. And when men awaken under the new
conscience they find themselves ever locked in a social system that
makes their new religious and moral conviction the mother of a
social revolution.
II.
In such a period of transition, with its accompanying moral
conflict, we find ourselves to-day at the dawn of a new century.
The external economic and social conditions of life have changed
vastly since the days of our fathers. And the generation now liv-
ing has been and is being modified in thought, conduct, and char-
acter by these changes.
The invention of machinery, with the resulting colossal devel-
opment of industry, national and international, has given us a new
material world to live in. Thus men have been brought into the
most close and complex relations in their daily activities, and the
natives and tribes of the earth are within speaking distance of one
another. Railroad, steamship, telegraph and telephone systems
have reduced the whole world to a neighborhood, a community,
and the race is being transformed into a conscious unity and sol-
idarity irrespective of color, creed, and custom. Mechanical in-
vention in a thousand lines, perfected in factory and field, has
produced that co-operative activity of men and of nations, making
the production and distribution of all the goods of life social in-
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THE PRESENT MORAL C0NFLIC1 887
stead of individual. Steam and electricity have ushered in the so-
cial age — the age of possible brotherhood.
A great intellectual change has likewise come over the people.
Modern science investigating and criticizing, never camping ex-
cept for new advances, is invading every realm of phenomena, and
has bidden defiance to all kinds of authority, and logically even to
its own — making its latest conclusions but data for wider gener-
alizations. The theory of evolution has revolutionized man's con-
ception of himself and of the universe. As a result we have a new
anthropology, a new biology, a new psychology, a new sociology,
and a new economics. The phenomena of the soul are being
studied with scientific precision. A vast literature is appearing
on the inner intuitional processes of the spirit of man, showing
the rational bases of mental healing, hypnotism, magnetism, tel-
epathy; conversion, moral transformation, regeneration; and of
other manifestations of the marvelous occult powers of the soul.
But all this new science and new soul study, which is the greatest
intellectual product of centuries, is but the crude bases no doubt
of a still newer science and a more complete philosophy under
which the whole meaning of Jife will be read anew. Our intellec-
tual life seems pregnant with still newer and 1 profounder revela-
tions touching more vitally the deepest issues of human existence.
Such remarkable changes in our material life and mental atti-
tude must revolutionize all that stands for morals and religion.
And so it is. We find ourselves in moral dilemma and spiritual
conflict. The old questions are up again for answer as if never an-
swered before. From literature of every form the old queries are
voiced: Is life worth living? What is the highest good? What
must we do to be saved? And the old statements of truth are ut-
terly inadequate. The best old bread offered seems stone to the
soul. The more men partake of it, the worse their moral emacia-
tion and spiritual darkness. "Good" people appear like pharisees
and hypocrites. The truths that once inspired men to heroic ac-
tion and which wrought mighty transformations in human char-
acter have become now the defense of moral inertia and spiritual
dotage — orthodoxy of creed supplants divinity of life. What little
spiritual power remains manifest here and there stems more like
the galvanic twitchings of a dead body than the real vigorous
movements of life. Men run hither and thither, now backward,
now forward, looking for some social panacea that will heal their
individual soul distress and relieve them from personal responsi-
bility ; or they seek some individual stimulant or narcotic that will
help them to meet or to forget the social guilt and suffering.
This moral conflict is the deepest fact of our times. It will
not be settled by the cry of some ecclesiastical body to come back
to the faith. Nor will it be settled by some mere protest that the
church is wrong, or by heaping all moral responsibility upon the
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888 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
social systems. This conflict will continue until all its phases are
met and that involves, as we shall see, a new theology or philoso-
phy of life, a new ethics, a new character, and a new social system.
And these in their entirety and significance involve the greatest
revolution of all human history. For our time is the epoch of
epochs, the transition of transitions, the revolution of revolutions.
The present moral conflict takes a three-fold form :
First : There is the conflict of new ideas or statements of truth
with the old.
Second : There is the conflict of the new conscience and char-
acter with the old ; much of the old "good" being positively im-
moral to the new.
Third : There is the conflict of these new ideas and' this new
conscience with the present social and industrial sysrem.
III.
In the consideration of this moral conflict we must examine it
in its concrete reality, just as we find it among our friends and
neighbors living their lives, and meeting their moral problems in
the common life. In this paper there is no attempt to interpret the
conflict from the standpoint of any particular school in ethics, re-
ligion, or of social philosophy. A moral conflict is on. The peo-
ple are in it. Considering what the people have believed, and what
has been their standards of morals, and what they are actually
passing through now, let us watch the concrete moral conflict as it
presents itself to our observation. What are the facts of the pres-
ent moral struggle. Men may have believed and may again begin
to believe things we don't like, but we must deal with what is, not
with what we would desire to find.
Moral teaching heretofore has been largely in the keeping of the
church and her priesthood. It has been only during the last cen-
tury that scientists, poets, and so-called secular authors have in-
vaded the domain of morals and asserted their right to teach with
some degree of authority. Democracy of religion is a late social
development. The older moral teaching obtaining in the
capitalistic era which is now the conservative factor in
the present moral conflict, is linked largely therefore with
theological and distinctly religious dogmas. Hence the first
element of the conflict is theological. The new moral teaching
involves theological heresy. The philosophy of human life,
whether social or theological, in which the new moral teaching
roots itself comes squarely into conflict with the old theology. The
good resists the better. It is of course in harmony with all evo-
lutionary thought to state that there is a permanent element in
each of the old ideas which is the stalk on which the new fruit of
truth will be borne. But the new statement of what these terms
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THE PRESENT MORAL CONFLICT 389
signify is vastly different from the old. It would take a volume
to develop this point, but a few sentences may serve to illustrate
the trend of the newer theological thought, which involves the new
ethics.
Consider the terms God and Christ ; sin and salvation ; heaven
and hell; Bible and gospel; faith and works; prayer and worship.
Take these terms one by one and reflect upon the generally ac-
cepted orthodox ideas for which they stand and it will be seen how
inadequate the old is as a definition of the new.
God is no longer a great monarch on a distant throne who
holds "formal receptions once a week," but the immanent presence
in all energy and life, co-extensive with all orders of existing and
possible phenomena. Christ is not a dying mediator paying debts
to offended deity, but the living revelation of the divine possibili-
ties of every man. Sin is social as well as individual, and evil is
the pain of life unadapted to environment and in violation of the
common good. The pilgrim can no longer escape from the city of
destruction. He is a social being and shares the social guilt and
pain wherever he may be. Salvation is character here and now
and everywhere. Heaven is not a distant abode of a ransomed few,
but a state of the free and harmonious here and everywhere. Hell
is no longer a lurid place of eternal torment, but the state of man
and of men, not punished, but suffering in consequence of the vio-
lation of the laws of life's health and harmony, here and every-
where. The devil is no more, and his gruesome task, prescribed
by the old theology is not eternal in any case. There is no place
of eternal exile in God's universe. The children will all come
home sometime, somewhere.
The Bible though unparalleled, is not the only source of moral
teaching We have other books and all history. We have our
own minds as privileged in the Spirit of Truth as those of Isaiah
or l^aul, and likewise as responsible. The gospel is no longer a
message to sinking, dying mutineers or pirates in a foundering
ship. It is the whole message of the ideal life, to a race being
schooled from ignorance and limitation to divinity and complete-
ness, faith is no act of blind superstition but the rational attitude
of the part to the whole, of the human to the Absolute Reality in
which it lives and moves and has its being. Works can be no
longer mere charities and fad philanthropies, but must be the
wf r c°' C -1 e ? ° f r( £ USt characters incarnating Justice and right
T«« 1 u^'a Praye . r becomes more and ™ re e»ctly what
S > g } r Prefaced: silent, meditative, receptive, behind
the closet doors of the soul, not vociferous, clamorous, noisy, talk-
Wm'3 1 W ° rS i lp ^ arieS m ° re and more of ever ^ conventional
form of any sort and rests again in spirit and truth.
«n ™ u™ .L Ct ^ w ^ n the new idea and th e old, however, is not
so much in the definitions of existing terms of rdigion as in the
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890 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
treatment of human life in all of its relations. The new teaching
refuses to set apart a portion of life and call it sacred and another
portion and call it secular. The new truth recognizes that all
human life just as we must live it is sacred and divine, and that
every realm of it must be moralized . Life is religion. Every man
is his own priest with an original relation to the universe. There
is no higher office than that of a human soul realizing its own free-
dom and divinity. Every place is sacred- — the home, the school,
the shop, the factory, the farm, the field. Every relation of human
life provides an altar where we offer and receive the sacrament.
All the hopes, wishes and ideals of our daily life, small and great,
become winged prayers receiving their corresponding answers.
All labor and activity become our modes of worship. Loving all,
at all times, in all places, becomes again what it has ever been — the
fulfilling of all law, the answer to all problems, and the deliver-
ance from all evil. This is the absolute religion still unfolding in
conduct and character, without priest, without temple, without
ritual, without ceremonial ; for every man is a priest ; and every
shop a temple, and all human intercourse is ritual, and the com-
mon life is its own grand ceremonial. To seek truth and wisdom
and to obey them, to perceive beauty, to produce goods on prin-
ciples of Justice and brotherhood, to realize the meaning and sig-
nificance of sex, to appropriate due pleasure, to enjoy mirth, to
love simply in all the common facts of life — all these and others
are elements of the new moral life. Thus religiousness gives way
to righteousness, and human life in all of its multiplied variety be-
comes its own religion. The moral life shall thus be no longer su-
perimposed ; it shall be the flower of human activity growing from
within, freed from priestcraft and ecclesiasticism. The new moral
life is the product on character of spiritual democracy.
IV.
Again, the quality of life produced under the old teaching is
inadequate to meet either the inner character need or the social
need of the present hour. The "pious" life, the "saved" life, the
"religious" life, the "holy" life of the best, however good, is not
good enough to meet the moral demands of the new conscience.
Hence another element in the moral conflict.
Consider some types of individual goodness of the capitalistic
era. We have the latest pietist asking, "What would Jesus do?"
the wholly sanctified Methodist ; the red-hot Salvationist ; the rig-
idly moral Presbyterian ; the coolly righteous Christian Scientist
demonstrating salvation and wealth through "principle;" the phil-
osophic "new thought" disciple ; the new brand of mystic, trying
his "unseen forces" and healing the sick ; and others which this
list may suggest.
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THE PRESENT MORAL CONFLICT 891
Now none of these types mentioned has the moral and spiritual
life which is required by the new conscience. This statement is
not carping criticism. For the writer has a debt to acknowledge
to each of these various schools of moral teaching. The criticism
is a plain matter-of-fact analysis of the condition of morals at the
close of an age of individualism and commercialism. Space will
not permit a satisfactory defense of this proposition concerning
the old conscience. But a paragraph at least is demanded.
It is surely a commonplace to say that old forms of good' are
always being outgrown. The conventional conscience has never
been positive, constructive, inspiring. It grows more and more
torpid at the end of an age such as the present. But specifically
the supreme complaint against the old in all its forms and at its
best is that it is the conscience of a narrow individualism, while
the age on which we have entered is pre-eminently a social age ;
and all that constitutes the morals of life must be extended to in-
clude political, social and industrial morality. Of course we speak
only relatively. For no morality has ever been purely individual-
istic. Morality is the outgrowth of social integration; and the
veriest seeming individual morality of all the past has given a
large contribution to social cohesion and development. But in
comparison with the social demand of the present the existing con-
science must be described as distinctly individualistic. Referring
to this question of morals in social and economic relations, a con-
servative writer, Prof. Borden P. Bowne, of Boston University,
says: "Our narrow individualism, combined with the torper of
the conventional conscience has produced an incredible deadness
in this matter (of social responsibility). If the lives of very many
persons of supposed morality and even of professed religion were
openly and avowedly devoted to the materializing and brutalizing
of society, they would not be more effective in that direction than
they are at present."
It would be almost cruel to uncover the bald ethical ignorance
of persons representing millions of the good, on whose minds it
has never yet dawned, for example, that there is any moral issue
involved in the relations of men in our present competitive system.
The social elements of morality have not been emphasized in the
capitalistic era. Take a concrete example of the point under dis-
cussion. The hymn book of the largest Protestant sect, the Meth-
odists, contains over one thousand hymns. Of these only eighty-
one are specifically under the heading "on Christ." Out of these
eighty-one but eight are on the life which Jesus, their professed
exemplar, lived ; and of these eight not one single hymn is on the
external objective life. Prof. Coe, of Northwestern University,
whose figures I quote, commenting on this point says that only
one and one-half per cent of the hymns of his church take up the
practical problems of every-day life. Let it now be remembered
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393 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
that the "practical" problems are largely if not entirely social.
They involve questions of social, industrial and political morality.
The hymnology deals almost exclusively with subjective morality.
This concrete instance may serve to show the comparatively non-
social quality of the moral life at its best as developed under the
old moral teaching.
Broadly yet correctly speaking the church which is the pro-
fessed oracle on moral teaching is wrong in its attitude toward the
whole social problem: on wealth, on labor, on property; on our
present competitive system. It continues to teach capitalistic
morals. And being wrong concerning this vast economic basis of
society its moral teaching and conclusions in almost every other
line is vitiated, and, as we see, on every hand practically powerless.
The really "good" people in the churches and cults betray the
current intellectual and moral ignorance with respect to the con-
tent and implications of their own professed faiths. They do not
even consider that they are accomplices in social crimes, by which
multitudes are waylaid, robbed, and plundered. These good peo-
ple innocently thank God constantly, and once a year formally for
prosperity, social and industrial, which analyzed to the bottom is a
vast "hold-up" and cunning commercial thuggery. We can keep
getting these types of morals in revival abundance and all the while
the social and industrial monsters will fasten their fangs tighter
and tighter into the children of men ; and in the jungle struggle
for existence men will keep on the sanctified look while they bleed
the people ; and wealth, "a monster gorged 'midst starving popu-
lations," will continue to give largely to charity which has usurped
the place of the love that never faileth.
The third element of the present moral conflict arises from the
incongruity of the new ideas and the new conscience with the pres-
ent social and industrial system. The new moral idea re-reads
the dignity and meaning of human life ; exalts the sacredness of
man above existing property rights ; and gives a divine right to
human need. Thus the new idea comes into a clash with a social
order that degrades human life, exalts property above man, and
makes man both the creator and victim in a huge mammonistic
debauchery. Let a man once become awakened to the new social
conscience and the present competitive system becomes to him an
incarnation of social injustice. The man thus awakened finds him-
self a partner in social crime. He is awakened to new social duties
and becomes aware of new social bonds. He is the keeper of his
brothers. Wherever social oppression and suffering exist he is
both inflicter and sufferer. He feels both the social pain and the
social guilt. But the awakened conscience is mocked by a social
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
THE PRESENT MORAL CONFLICT 393
system that laughs at brotherhood, sneers at mercy, tramples ele-
mental justice in the mire, and makes mammonism its religion.
Thi9 characterization of the system may seem to some too
strong. Be it remembered, however, that the present competitive
system, impeached by the new conscience, is that still remaining
brute phase of the predatory struggle for existence. It is seen in
its crudest form among the lower animals, and in its latest refine-
ment in our competitive struggle which has not yielded to the in-
tellectual genius and moralization of man. It is the next brute
element in civilization to be conquered by the free spirit of human
kings. Man must thus control his environment or remain slave
and sinner until he does.
Prof. Hyslop, of Columbia College, New York, in his recent
work on ethics, thus refers to this struggle for existence : "It rep-
resents the ghastly spectacle of universal destruction, the triumph
of mere force, and the embodiment of everything which is opposed
to the ideal. Under it the universe seems one vast system of sham-
bles for the destruction of the weak and the preservation of the
strong. The only right respected in such a system is might or
power. But it is apparent to every one at a glance that if any
morality is to be maintained at all it cannot come from the imita-
tion or application of the struggle for existence and the indiscrim-
inate warfare which it exhibits. Morality consists rather in put-
ting limits to this struggle for existence, and hence cannot be de-
rived from it. The struggle for existence is worse than a travesty
of morality. It is the very antithesis of it."
Thus he writes opposing the idea that the whole progress of
the world arises from this brute struggle for existence and survival
of the fittest. We have nothing to do with his argument. I quote
his words for a description of the competitive system and to show
its relation to morality. Our industrial system is "an application
of the struggle for existence ;" it is "indiscriminate warfare," and
morality must "put limits to this struggle ;" for it is "worse than
a travesty on morality ; it is the very antithesis of it."
As Herbert Spencer says, "The very conception of disordered
action implies a preconception of well-ordered action." When
men become awakened by the new conscience they perceive a well-
ordered society and see plainly the injustice of the present order.
They find themselves locked in this system of warfare. The right
to do right is thus denied them by the inherent wrong in a system
where all are producers and consumers of economic goods, and
where success is measured by power to control the production of
these goods. It is said that among the Comanches a young man
is not thought worthy to be counted in the list of warriors till he
has returned from some successful plundering expedition. The
greatest thieves are the most respectable members of society.
How descriptive of our modern capitalistic age ! How little adapt-
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894 INTERNATIONAL S0CIALIS7 REVIEW
ed to survive are the men in our times who awake to the new con-
science. Quoting Spencer again: "Ideal conduct is not possible
for the ideal man in the midst of men otherwise constituted. An
absolutely just or perfectly sympathetic person could not live and
act according to his nature in a tribe of cannibals. * * * If all
around recognize only the law of the strongest, one whose nature
will not allow him to inflict pain on others, must go to the wall
* * * a mode of action entirely alien to the prevailing modes of
action, cannot be persisted in — must eventuate in death to self, or
posterity, or both."
Now, while the men of the new conscience are not "ideal men,
absolutely just and perfectly sympathetic," they are yet the first
fruits of the new system inherent in the old. And Spencer's words
holds true of them. Their economic life must accord with pre-
vailing modes or else they must perish. In either case there is des-
perate moral conflict.
But since there is no individual escape there is but one thing
to do, viz., to protest against the social injustice and to work with
the despoiled and exploited class for the new social order. Prof.
Borden P. Bowne says that "it is perfectly idle to criticize a strug-
gle for existence by a moral standard which presupposes the pos-
sibility of friendly co-existence." This is the position taken by
many people to-day. He says that "such criticism is as irrational
and impertinent as a parallel series of reflections on the unaesthetic
aspects of war, while the battle is on." Herein we find the rough-
est practical aspect of the moral conflict. The battle of the com-
petitive struggle is on. There is no truce possible, no cessation at
sundown, no relief in success or defeat. If you don't make your
protest while you fight you will never make it. And so you must
go in and fight for bread and family and life, and with the same
brain and heart and hand that fights you must labor and struggle
for the peace of the co-operative commonwealth, where, to quote
Prof. Bowne's word, we expect "the possibility of friendly co-ex-
istence." The supreme criticiser against our whole social system
is that it denies "friendly co-existence ;" and the supreme farce of
the modern church and modern moral teachers is that they exhort
men to "love one another" and all the while bulwark a system of
commercial warfare where "friendly co-existence" is an impos-
sibility.
We have thus briefly attempted to show how our changed so-
cial and economic conditions have precipitated a serious moral
conflict. And we have seen how this conflict involves a new the-
ology, a new code of morals, and a new social system. To the
pain of this conflict any man can testify who is really awake to the
facts and forces of our times. But we believe that this pain in the
struggle of the soul and of society for freedom is but the birth-
pangs of a great and glorious liberty. / Stitt Wilson.
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Decadence of Personal Property in Europe
(CONCLUDED)
II. — THE ARTISANS.
jN branches of production apart from farming, handi-
craft industry, a dominant form of the economy of the
middle ages, plays a secondary and diminishing part
under the capitalist system. The artisan, proprietor of
his means of production, working for the local market, himself
selling to the consumer the products which he makes, is scarcely
to be found any longer except in branches of industry where some
obstacle exists to the extension of the market, to the development
of the division of labor.
This is the case notably with rural trades, with the industries
of luxury, and with those whose products are perishable and find
a limited local market.
"As a general rule/' says Du Maroussem, it may be laid
down that when the markets are confined, limited to the neigh-
borhood, or to a very small class of the population (as in the case
of bakeries and shops for turning out the most expensive furni-
ture) small establishments remain in the majority ; when, on the
contrary, the markets increase and become national or interna-
tional, the great factories and the domestic industries divide the
market between them ; the latter persist, as long as the hand of
labor can struggle, by its cheapness, against the progress of
mechanics.
"Conforming to these data, we can still find the small industry
* * * in the food-producing groups, bakers, pastry-cooks,
confectioners, butchers; in the groups of textile industries and
cloth-making, — the lace-makers, tailors, seamstresses, linen-
drapers, dress-makers, etc.; in the leather industries — morocco-
tanners, sheath-makers, pocket-book-makers, etc., in the wood-
working industry — almost the whole group of cabinet-making,
fancy turning, etc. ; in a portion of metal-working, as in the pre-
cious metals."
But in these very branches of production, personal property
in the means of labor, the autonomy of the producers, the indi-
vidualist organization of the factory, and oftener still of the enter-
prise, are tending to disappear. Sometimes it is large-scale pro-
duction which encroaches ; the factory which competes victorious-
ly with the artisan, as the organized bakery supplants the baker
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896 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
and the furniture factory replaces or drives out the cabinet-
maker.*
Sometimes by a very frequent form of the transition to the
factory system, the old processes maintain themselves by the side
of or to the exclusion of the new processes. Hand labor persists ;
the small employer keeps his workshop, alone, or with his family,
or with one or two assistants ; but because of the extension of the
market, an intermediary slips in between the producer and the
consumer; the artisan's industry is transformed into a home in-
dustry tributary to a "collective factory."t
From the technical point of view, nothing, or scarcely any-
thing, is changed. From the social point of view, there is a
complete revolution. In place of independent producers, work-
ing for their own account, disposing of the entire product of
their labor, we find ourselves in the presence of proletarians,
working for the account of a proprietor — a warehouse-keeper —
who centralizes the trade in their products, and furnishes them,
oftener than not, with models and materials, sometimes even with
the utensils, whether tools on machines, which they use. And
in our days this relentless evolution of the industry of the artisan
has taken on so general a character that our time has been called
"the century of the factory."
It should, of course, be understood that not all home workers
are former " employers who have fallen into the proletariat.
Schwiedland, in his numerous studies on the "collective factory,"
shows very plainly that the home industries can arise spontane-
ously, directly, without having passed through any other form,
or can be derived, not only from the industry of the craftsman,
but from all the previous forms of industrial production.
The absorption of independent craftsmen is, he says, generally
the principal way in which "collective factories" are formed in
crowded cities. But the absorption or transformation of the
craftsman is not confined to the cities, any more than the success-
ive development of home industry is confined to the transforma-
tion of the craftsman. All the forms of industrial production
have undergone this transformation into collective industry. In
the villages, in the hamlets, in the farms of the peasants, we see
domestic labor merging into collective manufacturing. It is the
same with wage labor, which equally had at one time a prime im-
portance as a mode of production, and even the most modern sys-
•Revue de Travail, December, 1890, p. 1298. Sorglnes: "The provincial cab-
inet-maker complains loudly of the Increase of factory competition, seeing that
the furniture factories are becoming more numerous and their machinery more
perfect.
tLeplay defines a "collective factory" as the organization of industry on a
large scale, where the employer centralizes the trade in products which a work-
ing-class population manufactures, for the account of the employer, In separate
shops or In their homes.
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DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPER! Y IN EUROPE 897
tern of exploitation, the factory, is being transformed, according
to the best thinkers, into the collective factory."* s
The examples of this last category, which mark a step back-
ward, a retrogression to lower forms, are at least doubtful and
certainly exceptional. f It happens often, on the contrary, that
the collective factory finds its origin in the capitalist transforma-
tion of home labor or day labor. That is the case, for example,
with straw-plaiting in Tuscany and the Valley of the Geer, and
with toy-making in Oberland von Meiningen, lace-making in
Flanders, the making of wooden shoes in Waes, almost every-
where, the weaving of thread or of wool.
Thus, by the side of the "master-workman," the cutters of
Nauner, the furniture-workers of Paris, the canuts of La Croix
Rousse, weaving wonderful silks on their dusty looms, the subor-
dinate employers, — tailors, shoe-makers, weavers, cigar-makers,
who still work in their own shops, but for the account of a cap-
italist; we find a multitude of artisans, who work in their own
rooms or at home, who have been enlisted directly by the man-
ager of the enterprise, or at least have never passed through the
craftsman stage.
Moreover, whatever may be the beginnings of home industry,
what always characterizes it is the dependence of the workers,
for the marketing of their product, — a dependence which usually
involves the economic prosperity of the entrepreneur, and the
poverty, or if they have anything to lose, the ruin, of the pro-
ducers whom he keeps busy.
Permanent depression of wages, enforced idleness through
the dead seasons' (the seasons when people die), — feverish work
through the rush seasons, — such is almost always, and especially
since the machine has played its part, the unhappy lot of the
home worker.
He is still the master of his own time, one may say, with no
regulations to interfere with him ; no overseer to watch him. But
what matters the absence of an overseer to those who have hun-
ger for a prison-guard, or the absence of rules to those who work
without respite, days and nights alike ?J
•Schwiedland: "La repression du travail en chambre." (Bee author's copy.)
tSee, for example, Kovalewsky: "La regime economlque de la HuBBle." pp.
173 et seq. (Paris, Glrard et Brlere, 1808.)
^Bureau of Labor: The 'clothing Industry In Paris, 1896, page 601: "Before
the law of November 2, 1892, on the labor of women and children • • • the
ten-boor day very often marked the dnll season and the day of twelve and a half
hours the rush season. Sometimes even, owing to the urgent demands of custom-
ers, the Indifference of employers and the partiality of forewomen, one might
point to a record of 44 hours In three days (12 hours, 20 hours, 12 hours). The
time-books, comprising the dally details of eight years' work, enable us to set at
the maximum of several well-known establishments. There are occasional days
?««IJ SJJSyTriJW A be ?5? e8 J.^ eek ]? record appears to be 77 hours. As
«? ££fi„ 8econ £ 8hlft » L tne shift which certain workers can Impose on themselves
at their own homes, these time-books make no mention. That is an unspeakably
sad feature of "home work."
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888 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
In his picture, "Summer Days," the artist Steinlein, shows
us a seamstress in her room, putting out her lamp when the first
rays of dawn enter her garret, and greeting the splendor of the
morning sky with these bitter words: "At last the season has
come when I can save three hours of kerosene a day." Would
it not be far better for her to work in a factory, confined at pain-
ful tasks, but protected to some extent by the factory laws?
Nowhere, perhaps, except at the homes of the peasants who
work for some commercial house, are wages so low, work-days
so long, capitalist exploitation so shameless, as in these "family
work-shops" of the great cities, which in our official statistics
count as so many distinct and independent enterprises. We need
only call to mind the horrors of the "sweating system" of the
East End of London, in the sweat shops of New York, — those
innumerable holes where whole families, living in promiscuity
and filth, work to the limit of fatigue in a poisonous atmosphere.
For let us not forget, — and this consideration may appeal to the
philanthropists who admire domestic labor, — these homes of mis-
ery for the producers are also homes of infection for the con-
sumers.
"It is certainly," says the hygienist, Tanquet, "through the
medium of manufactured articles that the most constant relations
are established between the different classes of society, and in
view of the danger of infection, we should not congratulate our-
selves that this system of work permits the father or mother of a
family to watch by the bedside of a sick child and still keep at
work. The isolation of these diseases becomes impossible; at
the homes of these poor people the partly finished clothing is
gladly used to take the place of needed bed-coverings, and thus
is especially suited to receive and preserve the germs of contagious
diseases."
No doubt it would be blackening a picture already dark
enough if we were to attribute these dangers, abuses and sad
results to all forms of home work. The glove-worker, for exam-
ple, protected by a rigid union organization like that of the old-
time guilds, does not experience, as yet, the distress of the shoe-
makers and the tailors. But it is none the less true that in most
cases home workers are worse treated than factory workers ; and
what we have just said of work in the cities applies equally, and
sometimes with an aggravation of wretchedness, to home work
in the country.
"It is there," said a Liberal deputy in the parliament at Vien-
na, "it is there that pauperism increases far beyond its increase
among the small industries of the cities ; it is there that the work-
day reaches eighteen hours, without bringing the workers any-
thing more than potatoes ; it is there that anaemia and plagues
sweep over whole valleys."
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DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY IN EUROPE 399
If then the collective factory, or, rather, collective manufac-
ture, succeeds in maintaining itself, if in spite of its lower tech-
nical efficiency it resists the formidable competition of the cen-
tralized factory, it is at the cost of the deep degradation and
demoralization of the workers it employs. We should therefore
desire, and even favor by legislative means, the transformation
of these degenerate forms of individual production into the high-
er forms of social production.
Those inclined to optimism may hope that this transforma-
tion will be the work of co-operative societies, grouping the home
workers and finally acquiring sufficient machinery to compete
successfully against capitalist industry. But in the cases which
are unhappily of such infinite number where such a hope seems
altogether chimerical, it should still 'be regarded as a real advance,
technical and social, if the exploitation of home workers by the
capital of the merchant can be replaced by the exploitation of
laborers in the workshop or factory by industrial capital.
III. — THE SMAU, RETAINERS.
In spite of the growth of the department stores, which Zola
describes in so masterly a fashion in "Le Bonheur des Dames,"
in spite of their disastrous encroachment on the surrounding
shops, the number of the small retailers, of all kinds, far from
declining, seems, according to recent census reports, to be con-
stantly increasing.
At the last meeting of the Verein fur Sozial Politik (Breslau,
1899,) W. Sombart stated (and supported his position by figures)
that their number is increasing more rapidly than the population.
For one that disappears, ruined by the capitalist bazars, ten ap-
pear in other branches of trade on other places, in the country, or
in the suburbs of large cities. They are ordinarily old servants
or workingmen who have saved up something, or else artisans
whose situations have become intolerable, and in the villages
farmers who have wholly or partly given up farming.
To these must be added a great number of clerks and sales-
men who, finding themselves out of a situation, or desiring to
marry, establish themselves on their own account, often with man-
ifestly insufficient resources. The possibility of supplying them-
selves too easily, in consequence of competition, with merchan-
dise on credit, leads to the invasion of certain branches of trade
by establishments with nothing solid about them, which appear
especially in times of depression like mushrooms after a rain, only
to disappear in the course of a year or two when inevitable ruin
overtakes them.
In short, small trade is the special refuge of the cripples of
capitalism, of all who prefer, in place of the hard labor of pro-
duction, the scanty gleaning of the middle-man, or who, no longer
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400 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
finding a sufficient revenue in industry or farming, desire to add a
string to their bow by opening a little shop. This is in particular
what explains the multiplication of saloons and taverns of all
sorts — the easiest and least costly enterprise to start — in all the
communes.
But it would be a serious mistake to suppose that these
miniature establishments, which the census officials characterize
as distinct enterprises, can be generally regarded as the personal
property of those who carry them on. A great number of them,
and a number constantly increasing, as capitalism develops, have
only a phantom of independence, and are really in the hands of a
few great money-lenders, manufacturers or merchants.
With rare exceptions, almost all the important breweries, with
a view to extending their market, own a greater or less number
of saloons ; and as experience quickly showed that to make these
saloons prosper, the sale of gin was much more advantageous
than that of beer, a number of brewers have made themselves
wholesale dealers in liquor.
It is this which explains the fact, apparently paradoxical, that
recently, at Bruges, the brewers energetically demanded the aboli-
tion of the license fee imposed only upon the retailers of distilled
liquors, whereas they seem at first sight to have every motive for
supporting measures which tend to restrain the consumption of
gin and consequently to increase the consumption of beer. The
contrast betwen the real situation and the apparent situation
which exists for the liquor trade, considered with reference to the
degree of capitalist concentration is found likewise in many other
branches of retail trade.
In the cities of Holland, for example, most of the bakeries are
only depots supplied by the capitalist factories. At London,
Macrosty, in an article in the Contemporary Review, March,
1899, shows that the cheap restaurants are found to be in the
hands of four or five firms. The milk trade is in the same condi-
tion. The drug and the cigar business are undergoing the same
fate ; a single company owns a hundred cigar stores.
To sum up, then, the countless business enterprises which fig-
ure in the census reports can be grasped in three classes :
1. Those which, while they count as statistical units, are
nothing but agencies, — branches of large capitalist or co-opera-
tive enterprises.
2. Those which furnish the manager only a supplemental in-
come, helping out his wages.
3. Finally, those which really constitute independent enter-
prises, of which the stock in trade belongs to the little retailer.
Now if the total number of commercial establishments is cer-
tainly increasing, it is much less certain that the profits of this
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DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPER TY IN EUROPE 401
last class, the only one which interests us from the point of view
of the union of property and labor, are tending to multiply.
True, their number is increasing, with the specialization of
trades, in fields where the economy of exchanges is developing
at the expense of the domestic forms of production. A village,
once purely agricultural, whose inhabitants baked their own
bread and traded their butter and eggs for merchandise at the
store in the next village, now possesses its bakery, its grocery,
or at the very least, one of those miscellaneous stores where they
sell yardsticks and colonial goods, saucepans and almanacs,
blacking and red herrings, corsets and straw hats. But if, in
rural neighborhoods, commercial concentration operates to in-
crease the number of shops; in the cities, on the contrary, the
development of the co-operatives and especially of the depart-
ment stores, some of which, like the Bon Marche on the Louvre,
employ several thousand people, inflicts upon the small retailers
a damage which is measured first by the reduction of their profits
and later in some branches of trade by a reduction in their num-
bers.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt, and it is one of the most seri-
ous defects of the present system, that the small retailers retain
a numerical importance out of all proportion to the services that
they render the community. Many striking examples have been
given of what the parasitism of middle-men costs the public, from
the Normandy apple, selling at Paris for seventy times what it
costs where it is grown, to the litre of wine from the south, which
brings fifteen centimes to the owner of the vines and is sold
for seventy or eighty centimes at the wine-shop. [This is about
fourteen cents a quart. By the time the same wine reaches Amer-
ica, the retail price is a dollar a quart. — Translator.] Again, we
learn from the Economiste Francais that the average price for
fifty kilograms of coffee, which reached 103 francs in 1893, had
fallen to 39 francs in 1899 ; now, this reduction of two-thirds has
had no effect on the retail price; only the middle-men have prof-
ited by it. Brazilian coffee, which does not cost in France, all
charges paid, more than 2\ francs per kilogram (25 cents per
pound) is currently retailed at 4 to 5 francs, while its purity is
not always absolute. Those who profit by trading in this article
tax it more heavily than does the custom house.*
Moreover, in spite of these profits, so burdensome to their
customers, the small retailers are so numerous that, especially
in the branches invaded by large-scale business, there are thou-
sands on the verge of bankruptcy. It has been well remarked by
Charles Gide that if every baker baked but one sack of flour a
•For the existing relations between wholesale prices and retail prices see
Newman's "Wholesale and Retail Prices," In the Economic Journal for Sep-
tember, 1897.
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403 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
day and if on that sack he had to live and pay his rent, his taxes
and his helpers, he would have to raise the price of every loaf
and still he would live most cheaply. All this proves that our
machinery for distribution is detestable and justifies the severe
condemnation pronounced years ago by the Utopian socialists
against the useless multitude of petty retailers.
"Commerce," said Considerane, "is useful only to serve the
needs of production and consumption ; it should be the servant of
the other two branches. * * * Its role is subordinate. Un-
productive in its nature, it adds nothing either in quantity or qual-
ity to the objects which pass through its hands; its operations
ought to be conducted with the smallest possible number of
agents. Now, this is realisable only by means of an administra-
tion which puts the producer directly in touch with the consumer
and suppresses all the intermediate robbers and parasites."
IV. — SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS.
In spite of the growing predominance of the capitalist organi-
zation, we still find, in existing societies, numerous and important
survivals of former social organisms, of ante-capitalist forms of
production.
Peasant proprietorship, the industry of the artisan and the
little independent business are not on the eve of disappearing,^
and wherever they survive, realizing the union of property and
labor, socialism has no thought of using compulsion to socialize
them.*
But however numerous the relics of ancient epochs may be in
certain countries, certain regions or certain branches of industry,
it is none the less true that as a general rule the development of
capitalism tends to eliminate the independent producers, to take
away their capital, or, at least, to take away their former inde-
pendence.
From the moment when the market reaches out to a sufficient
extent, the advantages of the master's eye, of manual skill, of
zeal for work stimulated by the direct and personal interest of
the producer, no longer suffices to compensate for the superior
productive advantages of the division of labor, of the exact knowl-
edge of the outlets for the product, and of the use of a more
abundant capital. Still more is it so in those branches of produc-
^Cf. Kautsky: "Das Erfuter Programm, pp. 150 et seq., (Stuttgart, 189*2.)
Frederlch Engels: "Die Bauernfrage In Frankreich und Deutchland" (neue zeit,
1804-1896, No. 10). "It la evident that If the public powers came Into our hands
we should not think of expropriating forcibly the little peasants (with or without
compensation) as we should be obliged to do With the largp proprietors Our
opinion, In what concerns the little peasant, is that he should be Induced to
transfer nls enterprise and his private property to co-operative associations, not
by force, but by the Influence of example and with the aid of the public
authorities.
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DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY IN EUROPE 408
!
tion, always growing in number, in which technical progress has
prepared the way for the reign of the machine.
Nothing is more striking in this regard than the valuable
American investigation of 1898 on the comparative productivity
of hand and machine labor.* These researches, truly admirable
for their precision, have borne on 672 kinds of products, industrial
or agricultural. Each kind is minutely analyzed in Carroll D.
Wright's report, from the quadruple point of view of the number
of workers, number of operations, hours of labor and dollars
paid for labor, necessary to produce the same product, first, by
hand ; second, by machine.
Let us limit ourselves to quoting a few typical examples which
show in a striking manner the overwhelming superiority of the
machine :
1. Making of ten carts.
By hand : 2 workmen performing 1 1 distinct operations and
working in all 1,180 hours, paid $54.46.
By machine : 52 workmen, making 97 operations and work-
ing in all 37 hours 28 minutes, paid $7.90.
2. Making of 500 pounds of butter :
By hand: 3 workmen, 7 operations, 125 hours, $10.08.
By machine: 7 workmen, 8 operations, 12 hours 30 minutes,
$1.78.
3. Making of 1,000 watch movements:
By hand: 14 workmen, 453 operations, 341,896 hours,
$80,822.
By machine: X workmen, 1,088 operations, 8,343 hours,
$17.99.
4. Making of 500 yards of twilled cottonade :
By hand: 3 workmen, 19 operations, 7,534 hours, $135.61.
By machine: 252 workmen, 43 operations, 84 hours, $6.81.
5. Making of 100 pairs of cheap boots :
By hand: 2 workmen, 83 operations, 1,438 hours, $408.50.
By machine: 113 workmen, 122 operations, 154 hours,
$3540.
6. Making of 1,000 pounds of bread in one-pound loaves :
By hand :, 1 workman, 11 operations, 28 hours, $5.80.
By machine, 12 workmen, 16 operations, 8 hours 56 minutes,
$1.55.
7: Making of 12 dozen men's jackets:
By hand : 1 workman, 4 operations, 840 hours, $50.40.
•Thirteenth Annual Report of the Commisiloner of Labor, 1808 (Washington,
looO).
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404 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
By machine: n workmen, 8 operations, 97 hours 15 min-
utes, $12.80.
Such figures need no comment; they trace in letters of fire
the inevitable destiny of the master-tailors, shoe-makers, bakers,
watch-makers, who do not produce specialties or articles of
luxury.
In spite of the desperate efforts of the small middle class to
preserve even a shadow of independence, hand labor for pro-
ducing all the objects of current consumption is disappearing
more and more before machine production, subjugating an in-
creasing number of wage laborers.
In Germany, for example, from 1882 to 1895, the number of
independent producers in the manufacturing industries dimin-
ished by 139,382, while the total number of industrial laborers
increased by 861,468.
If now we reckon all the professions, industrial, commercial
and agricultural, there is, since 1882, an absolute increase in the
number of producers who are independent or call themselves so,
as well as of employes and laborers, but while this increase is'
only 5 per cent for the independent producers, it is 20 per cent
for the laborers and 100 per cent for the employes. More than
three-fourths of the newcomers in the world of labor belong to
the wage-working class, and even in the total of the professions,
the proportion of those working for wages is sensibly increasing
at the expense of the independent producers.
This is shown by the following table, which we borrow from
M. Rauchberg:
Out of every hundred persons at work in the German empire
in 1882 and in 1895, the count shows:
Independent Persons working
producers. for wages.
1882. 1895. 1882. 1895.
Agriculture 27.78 30.28 72.22 69.02
Manufacturing 3441 24.90 65.59 75- I0
Commerce 44.67 36.07 55.33 63.93
Totals 32.03 28.94 67.97 7 l -o6
Thus, in spite of the reduction in the number of farm laborers,
of permanent day laborers, drawn in by the tentacles of the cities,
the relative importance of the proletariat goes on increasing.
Must we then say that fatally, inevitably, all the independent
producers are condemned, in a future more or less near, to be
transformed into wage-workers.
We have said elsewhere that a very different evolution may
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DECADENCE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY IN EUROPE 405
be conceived, that personal property may be transferred into co-
operative or social property, without necessarily passing through
the capitalist stage.* On the other hand, it appears clearly that in
a great number of cases, if personal property tends to disappear,
the higher forms of capitalist production, in spite of the advan-
tages which they offer from a rational point of view, are scarcely
at a stage to eliminate the lower, stagnant, miserable forms of
home industry, of small farming, of retail trade.
The parasitism of middlemen, the sterile profusion of trades
catering to luxury, the horrors of the sweating system, the work-
ing of petty tracts of land with their "proprietors" with five-cent
incomes, all these are products of capitalism, and it seems as if
they might have to last as long as capitalism itself.
Perhaps, also, certain branches of independent production,
some relics of peasant proprietorship, are destined to survive it.
Nothing hinders us, indeed, from imagining a socialist state in
which individual property and labor should coexist with collective
property and labor.
But however that may be, the certain fact is that in the prin-
cipal industries, those which answer to the most general and the
most extended needs, the superior productivity of machinery and
exploitation on a large scale tend to the extinction of personal
property and isolated production. And the same causes bring
their consequences; the capitalist forms of production and ex-
change, which characterize the present organization of labor,
manifest an ever-growing tendency toward concentration and
socialization.
Emile Vandervelde (translated by Charles H. Kerr).
♦See a report presented to the agricultural congress of Waremme on small
rural proprietorship. In Vandervelde and Destree's "Soclallsme en Belglque," pp.
869 et seq. (Paris, Glard Briere, 1898.)
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Evolution or Revolution?
| T has often been pointed out, and I repeat it once
more, that the socialist movement is essentially a
proletarian movement. No man belonging to the priv-
ileged classes or brought up in their views of life can
discuss socialism and its possibilities in an unbiased way, unless
he first removes the contagium of class-prejudice from his sys-
tem. Those who have what they do not need will otherwise
not be able to know and appreciate the sensations of a man
who has not even that which he needs.
The article of "Marxist" in the October number of the Inter-
national Socialist Review is admirable from the point of view
of a man who, in comfortable circumstances, can sympathize
with the gloomy apprehensions raised in the breasts of stock
and bond-holders by the growth of socialism. It is delightful
reading for the scientific economist who loves a brilliant display
of quotations from the galaxy of professional lights. It is ex-
tremely gratifying to the philosopher educated to the belief
that the free play of evolution's laws will in due time land the
world in a paradise of perfection without the assistance of the
"conscious mind."
But from the standpoint of a Marx-socialist, a class-conscious
proletarian, the article is entirely unsatisfactory. As a disciple
of Marx, I respectfully decline to associate with "Marxist"
under the same label. A Marxist who in the discussion of
economic questions emphasizes the necessity of justice for
capitalists while gliding serenely by the proletarian's right to
justice ; a Marxist who tries to outmarx Marx and to lead us
astray from the straight path of class-conscious socialism into
the "misere de la philosophic" ; such a Marxist is not our
comrade. "The indefiniteness of the conception of socialism,"
about which he complains, is indeed the main difficulty under
which he labors.
Permit me to supplement his article from the standpoint of
those who are not beset by this difficulty.
"Marxist" smiles a superior smile, because to Marx "com-
petition appears to be the only lever" which sets capitalistic
evolution in motion; and he informs us that it did not seem to
occur to Marx "that competition itself is but a transient phase
in the development of capitalism." Then he goes on to dem-
onstrate what Marx told us long ago, viz: that capitalist pro-
duction will finally lead to nationalization of industries. He
applauds Bernstein, because this writer was the first to point
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E VOL UTION OR RE VOL UTlON t 40t
out the failure of Marx to give industrial monopoly (trusts)
its proper recognition in the development of capitalism, but
thinks it wise to explain in a foot-note on page 221 of his article
that Marx uses the term monopoly only in a "colloquial sense,"
not in the sense intended by "Marxist."
That the transformation of capitalistic private property into
socialized property assumes before the vision of the author of
"Capital" the outlines of a violent revolution, is exceedingly
regretted by "Marxist," and he gives Bernstein another pat
on the shoulder for pointing out that this "sounds a discordant
note in Karl Marx's theory of economic evolution." How vio-
lent this revolution must have appeared to Marx is evident
from the fact that he describes it as "the expropriation of a
few usurpers by the mass of the people" and thinks the con-
flict will be settled by the state, the "midwife of every old soci-
ety pregnant with a new one."
Further comment on this side of "Marxist's" article would
be waste of time. I do not wish to make an idol of Marx;
that would be contrary to the tenets of socialism, and Marx
himself would be the first to resent it, were he alive. But I
would earnestly request Bernstein, "Marxist," et al, to con-
sider the following statements:
"To quote disconnected passages from the works of differ-
ent authors and construct them in a sense contrary to the
intention of the authors shows neither great learning nor deep
sagacity."
"To point out certain sentences of an author's work, which
happen to be not quite so precise as might be desirable, as
defects in the fundamental logic of the work, is idiocy."
"To invite strife and schisms in a party by continually shak-
ing its foundations with worthess discussions actuated by super-
ficial understanding is criminal."
"To create the impression that we don't know ourselves what
we want and cannot be taken seriously is suicidal."
Remember further that "Capital" and "Critique of Political
Economy" are not the only works written by Marx. Before
finding fault and indiscriminately criticizing him, read his other
works first ; read "Capital" and "Critique of Political Economy"
after them. Then, if you have a new message to bring to the
party, come forth with it. But I am inclined to think that you
will rather, if you are sincere and a true socialist, prefer to do
what Hitch would have all other socialists do, viz : "re-examine
your position and admit that you have made a mistake."
"Marxist" makes this passage from Marx the pivot of his
theory of capitalistic evolution : "It is not the conscious mind
of man that determines the form of his being, but quite the
reverse." Hence he concludes "that capitalistic society must
grow into socialism as the outcome of the free play of economic
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408 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
forces, without the intervention of the conscious mind, as em-
bodied in the socialist party platform."
It is remarkable that the author recognizes the law of evolu-
tion in economics, but entirely overlooks the fact that the con-
scious mind also is subject to evolution. Marx did not over-
look it, however. With the Communist Manifesto and his con-
scious application of the materialist conception of history he
started the mind of the proletariat on a course of evolution
that has long distanced the slow course of economic evolution
and will soon prove that, thanks to Marx, the statement truth-
fully applicable to the mind of man fifty years ago is no longer
true of his disciples.
It is the merit of t?.e Communist Manifesto, edited by Marx
and Engels and styled "completely obsolete" by "Marxist,"
of being the first to emphasize the fact that the "labor question
is a political issue." Through it the development of order
in social economy has become the mission of the working class.
No amount of development in industrial monopoly will free a
nation, if the proletariat is not educated to such an extent as to
understand the laws that "determine the form of its being."
No degree of nationalization of industries will produce any-
thing else but capitalistic socialism, if the proletariat is not a
class-conscious body- Industrial monopoly, so far from tend-
ing to socialization, will only create a class of tyrants who will
assume the character and claims of feudal nobility. Even in a
republic where direct legislation with all its accessories is in
full practice, the system of capitalistic monopoly — whether
nationalized or not — can still be upheld by bribery, intimidation
and fostering of ignorance in school, church and press, as long
as the mass of the people are not sufficiently educated. Lack
of education is precisely the reason why socialism is making
slow progress, wherever it is first taught. ,
Given a thoroughly educated nation and we could have had
socialism long before the progress of invention and science
had made private monopoly possible. Suppose, for a moment,
that the nations of the world had had the necessary intellectual
enlightenment at Christ's time, and socialism would have been
established then and there. Economic evolution, instead of
being the means of enriching the few at the expense of the
many, would then have resulted in shortening the hours of
labor and creating better surroundings for all- But the people
were too ignorant to grasp the import of Christ's doctrine, and
the ruling classes held them down under the iron rods of re-
ligious superstition and military force — as they do now, with
the added force of economic pressure, fallacious science and
a lying press.
In spite of all difficulties, the intelligence of the masses is
rapidly receiving enlightenment. But for this fact we socialists
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E VOL UTION OR RE VOL UTION t 409
would be roasted alive ad majorem dei gloriam, like the 'cranks"
of old ; but for the spread of modern intelligence, Hanna and
Co. would use us for candles to light up the lawn parties of
Washington "society." If it were not for the intellectual pro-
gress of the age, it is doubtful whether such little eggs as
"Bernstein, Marxist and Co." would even care openly to dis-
cuss social economy, let alone trying to gain notoriety by pre-
tending to know more than their intellectual fostering hen,
Marx.
Nationalization of monopolies without abolition of the N
capitalist system will not benefit the proletariat. The directors,
inspectors, chiefs, etc., would still claim superior salaries and
the "voting cattle" would have to be content with living wages
and long hours of labor as before. The policy of expansion
would provide a market for surplus products and the "slush-
fund" would grow proportionately. "Marxist" himself very
aptly illustrates this : "Public ownership of railways, telephones
and other public utilities is bright with the promise of new
political jobs by the hundred thousand." It will still be the old
drama of a proletariat exploited by a ruling class.
What good will "government directors upon the board of
directors of every trust," elected on a Democratic or Repub-
lican ticket, do the people ?
A state of society acknowledging "the interests of stock-
holders and bondholders, regulating the rate of interest and
the rate of dividends, rate of profits, scale of wages and so
forth," and realizing Fourier's dream of "social production
with the division of the product among Capital, Labor and
Talent," is a rather grotesque outgrowth for the brain of a man
who signs himself "Marxist." It would be a credit to the brain
of an old party boss. And the prerogative of the stockholders,
reduced to drawing an annuity fixed by the state and
voting at elections for directors," is a worthy pendant to the
suspension for several years with full pay of a certain army
official under the present administration. How delightful to
be "expropriated" under such circumstances I No more busi-
ness-worry, no more apprehensions for the safety of your •
wealth, only a regular salary — just because you happen to be
alive and to find human society in a lower state of intelligence
than bees that will not keep drones in their hive !
A little less science, please, and a little more common sense !
What are we to think of a socialist writer who can have the
heart to talk learnedly of a gradual process of evolution, while
millions of his fellow-citizens are forced to starve, to live by
stealth, to strike, to fawn, to sell themselves into lifelong
bondage? When children of tender years and women preg-
nant with growing life are forced into the ranks of wage-slaves,
has not the capitalistic system reached that point in its evolu-
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410 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
tion where the conscious mind should assert its sovereignty
and hurl the defenders of this moloch into the abyss of eternal
oblivion ?
What do those comrades, whose wan faces greet the dawn of
every new morning with the consciousness of another day's
slavery in store for them, think of waiting patiently, until the
gradual process of evolution has changed the basis and super-
structures of society so that they will get the full product of
their labor ? How will those, who with a long look of helpless
compassion at their invalid wives and their offspring doomed to
perpetual drudgery, starvation and want, start off to their daily
tasks, not with full dinnerpails, but with the adulterated food
bought at prices "the traffic will stand," like to await the days
when their great-grand-children's children, slaves no longer
through the gradual evolution of economic conditions, will
play around the May-pole in the shade of the trees nursed to
full growth by the decaying bones of their ancestors?
"Modern political science can conceive of a similar process
of evolution in the working out of Industrial Democracy," but
happily it cannot force our conscious minds to wait for that
process. Unless something more satisfactory is offered to us
than the mouldy husks of dried and shriveled philosophy, I
shall rely on two more powerful factors in social economy,
viz: hunger and love, to fulfil Marx's prophecy of the expro-
priation of the expropriators long before anyone will have time
to consider the question of providing a sinking fund for the
"claims of capital."
You invalid, exhausted by excessive exertion in the service
of soulless corporations, and unable to counterbalance the
waste of your tissue by regeneration of healthy molecules — for
want of means of subsistence — let it be a consolation to you
that science can estimate to a nicety the rate of progress in
the chemical dissolution of your body. It will be the only
consolation you will get from science, if "Marxist" is right in
his prophecy. Society wil regulate the "claims" of capital, but
the surplus values you contributed literally with your own flesh
and blood, and might have used to save your life had not com-
petition deprived you of them, will not be restored to you.
You young girl with traces of former purity and loveliness
in your face, now degraded and vulgar beyond conception,
who will compensate you for the loss of your purity, your
happiness, your worldly and eternal possibilities, Society must
not recognize any claims of similar nature.
You young toiler at the plow who might have been "a kingly
growth," to whom Life gave to beget "the thought that will
redeem and lift Man higher yet," but who is now dwarfed and
crippled physically from premature hard work beyond the
endurance of his growing body and mentally from lack of
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E VOL UTION OR RE VOL UTION t 411
culture, "Marxist"does not emphasize your birthrights. Look
at the picture of the Man with the Hoe ! You will be like him,
if a merciful fate does not relieve you of your burden in time.
You are not concerned in the trust question. Society owes
you no debt ; it has no sinking fund for your claims.
You young artist, haggard and crushed and doubtful of your
own talent, who, lacking social patronage and political pull,
missed your one chance out of a million to become great, give
up your ideals. Society has no use for an art like yours. It
wants docile and soulless tools. Kill your feelings, even if it
will burn your soul and degrade yourself in your own eyes
forever. Souls and lives will not weigh in the scale of Society
when the day of reckoning arives ; they are in commensurable
quantities, but gold and silver are not.
Is it necessary to increase this list ?
I am well aware that many scientists whose pulse beats only
with the two cold throbs "facts and figures, facts and figures,"
will at once sneer at my pathos and call it scorningly "senti-
mental trash." Their scorn is wasted on me. If this is senti-
mentality, make the most of it! You cannot deny the facts
and their intimate bearing on the economic question.
Until better proofs are furnished that it is unnecessary to
educate the proletariat into class-consciousness for the purpose
of voting itself into political power, I shall do my share to re-
peat the cry of my economic teachers: "Workingmen of all
countries, unite 1" Until assurance beyond doubt is given that
the capitalist class has "changed its human nature," I should
hold Marx fully justified in conceiving of the transformation of
capitalistic private property into social property as a revolution.
I doubt that the capitalists will part with their spoils without
a struggle.
I wish to lay great stress on the fact that socialists are striv-
ing for a peaceful conquest of the powers of government by
the ballot. If any violence is connected with this process, it
will be started by the class which now controls the legis-
latures, the army and the navy. Socialists have profited by
the history of the French Revolution of 1792, the German and
French crises of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871. They
have still more profited by the lessons of American history.
We are peaceful men. Universal brotherhood is our slogan.
But such names as Chicago, Brooklyn, Hazleton, Wardner and
others remind us that we must not look for justice to the
capitalist class.
We are determined not to give up our inalienable rights to
life, liberty and happiness. The attitude of the present privi-
leged classes will determine ours. We want peace on earth
and good will to all men ; but we shall not give up our right to
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412 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
justice for the sake of them. Whatever the form of the
coming struggle, the responsibility for the solution of the
problem by blood and iron \vill not rest with the socialists.
E. Untermann.
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The International Congress of Socialist Students
and Graduates
|HE first international congress of socialist students
and graduates was held at Brussels in i8gi, and its
proceedings were published in the Avant-Garde of
Brussels. The second congress took place at Geneva
in September, 1893, on the day after the great international
socialist congress at Zurich. The proceedings appeared in the
Etudiant Socialiste of our Belgian comrades and in the Ere
Nouvelle of Paris.
The third congress was held at Paris this year, just before the
international socialist congress, at the Hotel des Societes Sa-
vantes, on the 20th, 21st and 22d of last September.
There were represented the socialist students of the Univer-
sities of Paris (group of Collectivist Students of Paris) and
socialist students of Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, Armenia, the
West Indies, Lyons, Montpelier, Nancy, Caen and Aix. Ger-
many was represented by socialist students from the uni-
versities of Berlin and Munich, Belgium by delegates from
Brussels and Liege, Holland by Utrecht, Amsterdam, Delft
and Leyden, Italy by Rome, Denmark by Copenhagen,
Hungary by Budapest, Bulgaria by Sofia. Most of the
Russian and Polish universities and the Armenian socialist
students were equally represented. The socialist students
from the universities of Vienna (Austria) and Cambridge (Eng-
land), who could not be represented had sent reports, and the
socialist students of Belgrade (Servia) had delegated our com-
rade, D. Popovitch, to represent them.
On the other side, the socialist students of the great Ameri-
can universities, Harvard, Columbia, Brown and Chicago, had
joined the congress. These comrades showed great activity
through several months and even established an inter-collegiate
socialist bureau. For reasons unknown to us they could not
as expected be directly represented. The congress was opened
by Enrico Ferri (University of Rome) assisted by Borghjerg
(Copenhagen) and Lagardelle (Paris). Ferri brought out
forcibly the reasons for a congress of socialist students; just
as in organic life the cerebral cells have an organization of
their own, distinct from yet dependent upon the rest of the
body of which they form a part, so there is in the socialist life
a necessary division of labor. At the same time Ferri asserted,
amid general applause, the solidarity which unites the socialist
students to the organized proletariat of the whole world.
418
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414 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
THE PROPAGANDA WITHIN THE UNIVERSITIES.
Jean Longiiet outlined in a few words the significant history
of the Group of Collectivist Students of Paris. The delegate
of the socialist students of Budapest presented a thoughtful
report analyzing the reasons why, contrary to what might have
been expected from their past, and in spite of their liberal
phraseology, most of the Hungarian students have allowed
themselves to be carried away by their low nationalist passions.
The congress then opened for discussion the question of
how and by what methods we might bring into socialism the
greatest possible number of students. Three currents of
opinion on this subject took shape.
i. Some delegates, especially Belgians and Hollanders, sup-
ported to some extent by Tarbouniech, maintained that it was
useless to try to gain over to socialism the purely bourgeois
students. Supporting their arguments by the example of
their own countries, they showed that there can be no socialist
students except where there exists — and to the extent that there
exists — an intellectual proletariat. It is then upon the
economic interests of the intellectual proletariat that our pro-
paganda must exclusively — or almost exclusively — rest.
Many delegates exposed the inefficacy and the danger of
this mode of propaganda. The students, they said, are not
intellectual proletarians, they are would-be doctors, would-be
engineers, etc.; it is not until later that they will be doctors
without patients, engineers without employment; we can not
then appeal to economic interest before that interest arises.
Moreover it is dangerous to attract the intellectuals by the
promise of better situations. Whereas class interest is an
altruistic interest, so to speak, which reaches out in time and
space — what most of the intellectual proletarians ask for is a
situation for themselves, and right now. To appeal to the
economic interests of the intellectuals is then to awaken hopes
which will be deceived; it is moreover to introduce into the
socialist movement a number of dangerous arrivals, coming to
seek at the hands of the working class material advantages
(positions as deputies, municipal councilmen, city clerks, mana-
gers of co-operatives, etc.) denied them by bourgeois society,
and thus preventing the proletarian from educating itself in
administration.
2. Ferri, relying on his personal experience as a professor,
maintained that the best method of propaganda was science.
If so many young men who are socialists in the university
become reactionaries later, it is perhaps because nothing has
been awakened in them but the enthusiasm of youth, which dis-
appears quickly. We should, on the contrary, introduce social-
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INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF STUDENTS 415
ism into their minds as a part of science, as the logical and
necessary culmination of the biological and sociological
sciences. No need of making a direct propaganda, which, on
the other hand, would frighten many of the listeners, — enough
to explain the whole of science, without the mutilations inflicted
on it by the bourgeois orthodoxy, of their own accord the
listeners will draw socialist conclusions. "Without pronounc-
ing the word socialism once a year," said Ferri, "I make two-
thirds of our students conscious socialists." Among working-
men, it is necessary to add the socialist conclusions to the
scientific premises, because the workingman's psychology per-
mits it, and indeed requires it ; before an audience of bourgeois
intellectuals, it is necessary to give the scientific premises alone,
and let each mind draw its own conclusions.
3. To this scientific or rational propaganda, Lagardelle adds
a propaganda sentimental or moral in its character. In fact
almost all the socialist students have come into socialism
through moral motives- It is not till later that their readings
and studies confirms their spontaneous feelings by scientific
reasons.
The following resolution, presented by Lagardelle, was
adopted by a unanimous vote of the nationalities except that
Holland and Bulgaria dissented.
"The Congress holds that while appealing to the class inter-
ests of the future intellectual proletarians, the socialist propa-
ganda in university circles should be addressed more particular-
ly to the scientific spirit, to the moral sentiments, and to the
democratic aspirations of the students."
At the request of a professor in the primary Normal School,
the Congress calls on the groups of socialist students to make
an active propaganda among Normal School professors, who
will, in turn, transmit their socialist convictions to the teachers
they will have to train, and who thereby may do a work of
capital importance throughout the country.
On motion of the delegate from Munich, the following reso-
lution was then adopted:
"The Congress is of the opinion that the best means of propa-
gating socialism in the universities is to organize, along with
clearly socialist circles where they are possible, neutral circles
for the study of the social sciences."
II.
ROW OF SOCIALIST STUDENTS IN THE WORKING-CLASS
MOVEMENT.
Lagardelle attempted to define what that role should be.
He held that the socialist students should not elaborate theories
in their class-room, but should aid the proletariat to develop
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416 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
the theory from itself. Marx said at the Congress of Lau-
sanne : "The role of the international is not to dictate formulas
to the proletariat, but to aid it to find its own proper line of
conduct."
The question of the "people's universities" occupied an en-
tire session. Only one delegate, Comrade Polack (of Paris)
showed himself hostile to them in principle. He proposed the
following resolution:
"The Congress, although recognizing that the class struggle
is but a means and not an end, declares that the intellectual
emancipation of the workers must be, like their economic
emancipation, wrought out by the workers themselves, and
it encourages the socialist students to create socialist universi-
tiesjnore popular and fuller of the university spirit than the
bourgeois 'people's universities/ "
It should be noted that this resolution only obtained the vote
of its author. ,
Several speakers opposed this proposition, among them
Jaures, who pointed out that it was as absurd to advise the
proletarians to educate themselves as to advise them to enrich
themselves; the intellectual capital of mankind ought to be
taken by them, like the economic capital of the bourgeoisie.
No great revolutionary movement has hesitated to avail itself
of all the intellectual forces of the past- And if there are snobs"
in the "people's universities," that is only a sign of growth and
of vitality. Moreover, with the people's universities as with
parliament, as with the labor unions, as with the co-opera-
tives, it shows a want of faith in socialism to dread that
it will dissolve on contact with reality; on the contrary,
far from infusing their prejudices into the socialist movement,
the intellectual bourgeois converts will lose them in it.
Boucher, in a report presented in the name of the Group of
Collectivist Students of Paris, contrasted with the old social-
ist method, which required nothing but disciplined sharpshoot-
ers, the socialism of to-day, which calls for intelligent men.
He attempted to trace a course of study for the socialists of
the people's universities, insisting upon the necessity of a uni-
fied programme and of the co-ordination of the efforts of the
professors. He concluded by inviting the socialist students to
enter the people's universities, either as professors or as volun-
tary critics; there is, apparently, the real battle-field for the
socialist students, there is the role which is most suitable to
them in the whole range of the movement ; that which will ex-
cite the least antagonism, and where they will be the most
useful.
Comrade Ivanowski explained quite fully the work of the
people's universities in Austrian Poland. The delegate from
Munich, replying to criticisms against the people's universities,
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INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF STUDENTS 417
and to the special charge that they attract none but the bour-
geois, declared that in southern Germany 30 per cent of the
attendants upon the people's universities are manual laborers.
The delegate of the socialist students from Moscow and St.
Petersburg, replying to certain unjust criticisms which a Russian
delegate had incidentally made, explained the deplorable situa-
tion of the Russian socialist students. Fifteen hundred to two
thousand are arrested every yeai* for socialist propaganda work r
and hundreds and thousands are sent to Siberia.
Soldi, a private tutor in the University of Rome, explained
what had been done in the way of higher popular instruction
in Italy, where several people's universities are in process of
formation, especially in northern Italy.
Comrades Andre Hesse and Jean Louguet proposed the fol-
lowing resolution:
"Whereas, The question of the people's universities should be
examined in the light of the general conceptions which direct
the action and the propaganda of modern socialism, and
"Whereas, It is for the interest of the whole proletariat to>
participate in science, while on the other hand it should never
forget its mission as a class party, —
"Resolved, (1) Wherever a people's university is formed,
socialist or non-socialist, it is the duty of socialist students to
enter it.
(2) Wherever the working-class members of a people's uni-
versity are sufficiently class-conscious, it is important that it
be made a socialist university.
(3) Wherever a people's university is established with aims
hostile to socialism, it is important and obligatory to oppose it."
The first two resolutions were adopted unanimously; the
third was rejected, as implying dangerous reservations, and
it was replaced by the following resolution by Comrade Uhry
(Paris) :
"(3) The socialist students are invited to take part, if need
be, even in universities that are purely bourgeois."
IV.
INTERNATIONAL REPORTS.
Comrade Tordeur (Brussels) announced the forthcoming
appearance of the "Socialist Student," edited by our Brussels
comrades. This journal is designed as the international organ
of socialist students, and its editor is at the same time the
international secretary of the socialist students.
The following resolutions were then adopted :
On motion of a delegate from Berlin —
"The Congress expresses the warmest sympathy for the
comrades of Russian universities who in the struggle for the
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418 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
cause of the proletariat and the defense of scientific researches
are victims of the Czar's oppression-"
On motion of Lagardelle —
"The Congress expresses the hope that following the ex-
ample given by the municipality of Lille, the socialist munici-
palities may extend the practice of loans on personal credit
to poor students."
On motion of Comrade Staneff (Bulgaria) —
"The Congress protests against the support given by foreign
governments to the Turkish satrap, and sympathizes with the
nations oppressed by his tyranny."
The Congress voted:
"The next international congress of socialist students shall
take place not later than the time of the next socialist inter-
national congress. The general secretary shall consult the
different nationalities on this subject."
The Congress closed with an address by the president of
the session, our friend Vandervelde, who called to memory the
modest circles of socialist students started about 1888-1890,
and the pardonable suspicions entertained by the proletarians
of the time against the intellectuals. He reminded the social-
ist intellectuals that they came into socialism for work, not for
honor, and declared the Congress adjourned in the midst of
shouts of acclamation, "Vive 1* Internationale."
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American Federation of Labor Convention
IHE twentieth annual convention of the American Fed-
eration of Labor is now a matter of history. It is doubt-
ful if any delegate present remembers much that was
done outside of smashing trade autonomy, turning down
socialism, and having a running fight over the question of putting
the initiative and referendum into practical operation and demand-
ing a Cabinet position for a trade unionist.
The latter proposition was one of the first to come up. Down
in Washington, and occasionally in the daily newspapers, a bou-
quet with a string attached is thrown toward the merry working-
man. It contains a billet doux promising a new Cabinet position,
to be known as Secretary of Commerce and Industry. Several
resolutions bearing on the subject were before the house. A reso-
lution was introduced reciting that nothing could be hoped for
from a politician in such a position and demanding that a trade
unionist be appointed. And then the "good" trade unionists waxed
wrothily, declared with deep emotion that the U. S. Supreme
Court would label such an act unconstitutional, and suggested that
after the position is created the powers be petitioned to appoint
a union man. The "bad" Socialists demanded that a trade union-
ist be specified, that the Supreme Court be given the opportunity
to pass upon the law after it is enacted, and that no compromising
and weakening should be manifested at this time. The Socialists
were defeated.
The first couple of days the initiative and referendum was
glorified in many resolves and speeches. But finally when a prop-
osition came in to elect Federation officials by the initiative and
referendum it was suddenly discovered that the plan was "im-
practical." The Socialists held that consistency ought to be dis-
played occasionally, that the present method of electing officers
gave rise to charges that a few delegates absolutely control the
Federation, and that the present monarchical system should be
supplanted by a democratic plan. The conservatives made their
strongest point by claiming that direct election would be too ex-
pensive and too cumbrous, and by a vote of three-fourths to one-
fourth the Cleveland resolution was killed.
The heavy work came on the Socialist resolutions. The Cleve-
land delegate introduced a resolution bearing on the trust and
monopoly question, and the committee recommended changes that
were really a backward step from the position taken in Detroit a
year ago. The A. F. of L., however, is on record as declaring that
"the movement of capital to concentrate and co-operate has not
419
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4»0 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
lessened, but, on the contrary, nearly all productive industry, out-
side of agriculture, is now controlled by trusts and monopolies,
which have the power largely to lower wages on the one hand or
raise prices on the other, thus enforcing great hardships upon the
working people." The non-unionists are warned to organize into
unions and to study the development of trusts and monopolies.
The substitute, although striking out the words : "with a view to
nationalizing the same," was acceptable to many of the progress-
ists, who voted for it.
Four other socialistic resolutions were reported, but the con-
stitutional amendment from Cleveland was withdrawn in order
that all effort might be centered upon a plain declaration in favor
of the collective ownership of the means of production and distri-
bution, fathered by Delegate Slayton, of the United Brotherhood
of Carpenters. Delegates Kleffner of Omaha, and Bracken of the
Lathers, refused to withdraw their resolutions, and, therefore, the
committee bunched the three, reported adversely and submitted
a substitute, which was adopted by 4,169 to 685, though the vote
is incorrect, some voting in the negative having been unwittingly
counted in the affirmative or not at all. The substitute reads in
part :
"We cheerfully accept, and desire, all the assistance and useful-
ness which may or can be given the trade union movement by all
reform forces. The aspirations, hopes and aims of the members
of trade unions are very similar to the expressed wishes of the
greater body of Socialists, namely, that the burdens of toil may
be made lighter, and that each worker shall enjoy the complete
benefit of that which he or she produces."
The report goes on to say that all worship the ideal of greater
liberty and brighter life, but that the workers reach different con-
clusions as to the method of gaining the desired end. The trade
union movement is held to be the true and legitimate channel
through which the toilers should seek present amelioration and
future emancipation, and it is claimed that the unions do not now
and will not in the future declare against the discussion of eco-
nomic and political questions in their meetings. In conclusion, it
is declared to be the inherent duty of affiliated unions to publish in
their journals, to discuss in their meetings and the members there-
of to study in their homes all questions of a public nature which
have reference to their industrial or political liberty.
This, then, is the Federation's latest political stand. It is prac-
tically meaningless, and the only commendable thing about it is
that it guarantees political and economic discussion in the unions.
This concession, if it can be called such, caught many sentimental-
ists, and even delegates who took the floor and called themselves
Socialists and were so regarded. Quite a few representatives from
the larger bodies claimed they were thoroughly in- sympathy with
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A, F OF L. CONVENTION 421
the resolutions declaring for the collective ownership of the tools
of production, but they feared the rank and file would not approve
their action if they voted for their personal convictions. As a mat-
ter of fact, nearly one-half the vote in the convention was pledged
in favor of a declaration for socialism, but when the conservatives
opened fire many ran to cover for fear of arousing antagonism for
their organizations. As it is, one-third of the delegates (fifty-two)
voted against the committee's substitute and for the Slayton reso-
lution.
As to the debate, probably the less said about it the better —
probably if the rank and file, who had no axes to grind, had been
present and gave an impartial verdict, the roll call would have been
more equally balanced. The Socialists took their stand upon prin-
ciples and discussed actual, existing facts. The anti-Socialists in-
dulged in personalities, juggled with deleonism and appealed to
prejudice. Indeed, President Gompers frankly declared that he
would not discuss the principles of socialism, but instead he pro-
ceeded to knock the stuffing out of several straw men. Messrs.
Duncan, Lennon, Mitchell and others pursued the same tactics,
and visitors and newspaper men voluntarily expressed the opinion
that the debate was farcical and unfair. Of course, the "antis"
carried many votes with them — they possessed power — and it oc-
curs to the writer that if certain so-called Socialists had in years
past consumed one-half the time in educating trade unionists that
they did in damning them no such ridiculous debates would take
place. However, the tide of socialism continues to rise, and in
another year or two ultra-conservatism will be forced to the rear,
just as was fanaticism in the Socialist movement.
Trade autonomy was next in importance to socialism. The
fight between the autonomists and industrialists, or centralization
and decentralization, or unconscious socialism and individualism,
as you please, became quite bitter, and threats of secession and
the disintegration of the Federation were made on numerous oc-
casions by intemperate autonomists, but they will probably take
a more sensible view of the situation henceforth. The onslaught
made against the Brewery Workers was the test. Various small
unions attempted to secure jurisdiction over craftsmen employed
in breweries, but it was finally decided by an overwhelming vote
that the Brewers' Union should control all workers employed in
brewing establishments. The printers'-machinists* struggle has
been practically settled in favor of the former, who were lightly
censured, but will control all machine tenders in printing offices.
On the question of autonomy the Socialists were a unit in favor of
centralization, contending that as capital becomes more compact
it is necessary for labor to also become more closely federated
and combined, and that collectivism is steadily superceding indi-
vidualism.
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422 INTERNATIONAL S0CIALIS1 REVIEW
The Federation took a decisive stand in favor of municipal
ownership of public utilities and against compulsory arbitration.
Many questions relating to various unions, but of no general im-
portance, were cussed and discussed. Excepting McQuire, the
old officers were re-elected, D. A. Hayes, of the glassworkers, fill-
ing the vacancy in the Executive Council. The "slate" went
through without a break. Many delegates were incensed and de-
clared with emphasis that next year the "slate" will be broken into
smithereens, and, indeed, from dark hints thrown out by a miners'
official in the presence of the writer, "new blood" will be injected
into the Federation at Scranton.
Max S. Hayes.
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Reply to Mr. Stone
N the November Review Mr. Stone answers our arti-
cle on money in the July Review. The powers have
limited us to a brief space for our reply. A brief
space will be sufficient. The discussion involves
the following points, all of which are successfully dodged by
Mr. Stone :
i. The labor theory of value is subject to certain exceptions;
it does not apply to monopolies, articles produced under pat-
ents, copyrights, rare works of art or genius, antiquities which
cannot be reproduced, etc. Marx himself raised the question
whether gold and diamonds do not belong under the exceptions
(Capital p. 4).
2. Admitting for the sake of argument that gold does not
belong to the exceptions, Marx's reasoning holds good when
gold by weight is the exclusive currency with no credit. No
such condition exists in civilized communities, and Mr. Stone
does not claim it.
3. With the introduction of credit money Marx's reasoning
no longer holds good, as we claim. Marx ridicules this claim
on page 193 of Critique. Mr. Stone fails to join issue with us
on this point.
4. Out of credit money and also out of the stoppage of the
free coinage of silver grew fiat money, which is a public utility
manufactured by the state in limited quantities as a monopoly.
Marx says it represents gold or silver. We say it does not,
and again Mr. Stone dodges the issue. We cited India as
proof. Dodged again by Mr. Stone. He cites worn coins
under William III. which would not pass for their face value.
We cite our own gold coins, which, if worn, do not pass for
their face value, while our fiat silver coins pass for face value.
Mr. Stone says we are frank, bold and logical in stating the
quantity theory under limited coinage ; in the next sentence he
tells how the miners would rush their metal to the mints after
the mints were closed against them. Economic agnosticism
covers a multitude of sins, but we still insist that the socialists
are not doing justice to themselves on this question. They are
neither frank, bold nor logical. We again repeat, "Ausspre-
chen das was ist."
We have sent to Mr. Stone our pamphlet entitled "Money,
Metalism and Credit." It is as frank as we could make it. If
we are wrong we wish to make the error as plain as possible
so that it can be pointed out, and we will then change our views.
This pamphlet mailed free to any address and criticism invited.
Marcus Hitch, Reaper Block, Chicago.
[With this communication this discussion must be closed for some time at least as
matters of more pressing interest demand our space. Ed.]
428
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# SOCIALISM ABROAD **
BELGIUM.
THB INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST BUREAU.
The following announcement has been issued with the re-
quest that all socialist papers copy the same :
"Up to the present time only a few countries have appointed
the delegates to the International Bureau. Germany has named
Auer and Singer ; France, Jaures and Vailliant ; England, Quelch
and Hyndman; Belgium, Anseele and Vandervelde, Austrian
Poland, Bolestas, Jedizejowski and Wojnarowska. Carl Kautsky
has been chosen by the Germans as corresponding secretary. It
is desirable that all socialist parties not having as yet appointed
their delegates should do so that the correspondence may not be
delayed. In those countries Where there are various factions it is
urgent that they hold a meeting to confer upon the various ques-
tions.
Finally we ask the secretaries of the various socialist parties
to send us the following absolutely indispensable facts: (i) Ad-
dress of the seat of the party ; (2) Name and address of the secre-
tary of the party ; (3) Name and address of the treasurer of the
party ; (4) Name of the official organ of the party or of the prin-
cipal socialist organs.
The International Secretary will begin to act from the first
of December.
Le Peuple, of Brussels, announces that the Pope has an ency-
clical in preparation treating on socialism, the principal points
of which, it is claimed, are already known. It is said to be ad-
dressed directly to the Christian socialists whose work in general
is rather favored, but they are warned to abstain from all political
action and to give their support to existing governments, wheth-
er democratic or not. It is possible that the full text of the ency-
clical, when published, will modify these points somewhat, but
it is generally admitted in European Church circles that the
Vatican is now engaged upon an encyclical on socialism.
A special convention of the Belgium socialists was recently
held to determine the position of the party regarding proportional
424
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SOCIALISM ABROAD 425
representation. Although there was considerable objection it was
decided not to oppose it and to continue the efforts for universal
suffrage. The convention also appointed Victor Serwy as secre-
tary of the International Socialist Bureau.
The Belgian government has been making an inquiry into
the extent to which the army has become "contaminated" with
socialism. The Minister reported that "in general our militia
are imbued with the idea that they are the victims of an unjust
law of recruiting." He also admits that socialism has still made
great inroads, but nevertheless concludes that "without doubt
they may still be depended upon to defend our soil against in-
vaders."
The socialists have just introduced a bill into the Chamber of
Deputies providing for an old age pension for laborers of 600
francs a year. In the case of miners the pension is to begin at
the age of 50 and with other workers at 55.
FRANCE.
The storm of dissension in the socialist- ranks seems to have
spent itself and everything now looks like a speedy union of the
socialist forces: A debate was recently held at Lille between
Jules Geusde and Jean Jaures, the two most prominent men in
the opposing parties. This debate was marked by the best of
feeling, and both speakers expressed the hope of an early union.
Le Mouvement Socialiste gives it as its opinion that : "The time
of the realization of socialist unity is approaching. The pressure
of the masses has been strong enough to conquer the resistance
of individuals and to force unification, with little delay upon all
the socialist forces. Until very lately the idea of unity has en-
countered only opposition among the leaders, but now there
seems to be a jealous emulation among them to translate the will
of the militant proletariat into deed." As a result of this move-
ment two projects for unity have been submitted, one by the Parti
Ouvrier Francais or Guesdists in connection with the Parti So-
cialiste Revolutionaire, led by Vailliant, and the other by the old
Comite General, containing representatives from all the organiza-
tions except the Guesdists. These two plans differ only in minor
details of organization and government, and both declare for
organization of the proletariat as a class into an uncompromising
political party, using almost exactly the same words. Under
these circumstances it is difficult to see how the divisions that
have hitherto exhausted the French comrades can longer endure.
An interesting item in Le Socialiste tells of the recent Socialist
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426 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
Congress held in the French colonies in the West Indian Islands.
It was reported that receipts and membership had more than
doubled during the past year. There was also a report of an active
movement among women socialists. Several municipalities are in
the hands of the party and a committee was appointed to deter-
mine a municipal program in accord with the one of the Parti
Ouvrier, of France, with whom the West Indian French social-
ists are affiliated. Two delegates were appointed to go to Paris,
one of whom, Ceran Tharthan, is one of the strongest figures in
the international socialist movement. He was the founder of
the socialist party in Guadaloupe and was elected a municipal
councillor in 1897. Since that time a campaign of reaction and
persecution against the socialists has been conducted by the
French government and he has been repeatedly imprisoned. At
one time while he was mayor he attempted to prevent a whole-
sale election fraud, but was himself instead arrested and thrown
into jail, and condemned to six months' imprisonment and a fine
of 500 francs. Meanwhile the actual criminals were set free.
Tharthan has now gone to France, where, with the assistance
of the French socialists, he hopes to force the French govern-
ment to right the wrongs inflicted upon him and his comrades.
Millerand has just introduced a bill into the Chamber of Dep-
uties providing for compulsory arbitration. The bill is very elab-
orate and provides for the election by ballot of representatives to
an arbitration council, and also arranges that no strike can be
declared except it has been voted for in secret ballot and carried
by a majority of the men concerned. This vote must be repeated
every eleven days during the strike. The bill is only to apply to
establishments having over 500 employes. The bill is meeting
with considerable opposition among the socialists, as well as from
the large capitalists.
Emile Zola is about to publish the second of his four "Evan-
giles." The first of these was "Fecondite" (Fruitfulness), and
dealt with the population question. The second one is entitled
"Labor," and is to deal with the social organization of the future.
GERMANY.
The two most significant events of the past month in the German
socialist movement were the speeches of Bebel on the Chinese
question and of Auer on the subject of the Bueck-Posadowsky
letter. The speech of Bebel constitutes perhaps the greatest docu-
ment yet issued on the Chinese question. With a wealth of detail
he pointed out how the whole history of China with the outer
world had been a story of criminal aggression on the part of the
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SOCIALISM ABROAD 427
capitalist powers involved. He quoted from the letters from Ger-
man soldiers in China that the Vorwaerts is now publishing each
day, and that are creating such a sensation, detailing the outrages
committed by the present allied forces. He called attention in
a most dramatic manner to the famous "no quarter" speech of
the German emperor, and in general so routed the defenders of
the government that they took an entire week in which to reply
to him. The occasion of Auer's speech was the writing of a letter
by a high state official to a German capitalist asking him for cam-
paign funds to assist in getting the notorious "Penitentiary Bill,"
forbidding laborers to organize under pain of imprisonment,
through the Reichstag. Com. Auer seized the occasion to point
out the fact that capitalist governments are simply committees to
carry out the will of the capitalist class, and made a speech that
will constitute a powerful means of propaganda.
In the first ballot for the Wurtemburg Lantag the socialists
succeeded in electing two members and will have the right to
contest ten seats in the final ballot, of which they are certain of
carrying two more. They had but one representative in the pre-
vious house. Four socialists were elected to the municipal coun-
cil of Dessau with an increased vote. On the second ballot the
socialists succeeded in electing Com. Quark to the municipal
council of Frankfort on the Main. This is the first socialist ever
elected to this body.
The socialist members of the municipal council of Offenbach
have recently established a municipal drug store and arranged
for the free service of competent mid-wives, while a measure has
been introduced providing that the city shall purchase the coal
needed by its citizens and deliver the same at cost.
* * *
AUSTRIA.
In Marburg ten socialists were elected to the council in the
recent municipal elections, and in Graz the socialist members of
the council were increased from one to seven, with four seats to
be contested on a second ballot, of which the socialists feel sure of
gaining three.
ITALY.
A governmental commission is now engaged in trying to
"whitewash" the work of the Neapolitan boss, Casalle, whose
exposure by the socialists was described in our last number. It
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428 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
has been proven that he was the head of a band of secret political
assassins, the Camorra, who, in Northern Italy, act much the
same part as the Mafia in the South. High officials in the na-
tional government are involved, and the administration is bend-
ing every energy to break the influence the exposure is having in
favor of socialism.
HOLLAND.
In the discussion during the last month upon the conditions
of suffrage, Herr Kerdyk, the leader of the Free Thinkers Party
in the parliament, declared that from now on he should ally him-
self with the socialists in their struggle for universal suffrage.
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THE WORLD OF LABOR
By Max S. Hayes
It is daily becoming more generally believed that another great
strike is coming in the spring. The United Mine Workers are be-
coming too powerful, and the operators fear that their class inter-
ests will be disturbed by the organization. Contracts and agree-
ments for the year end the first of April, and a pessimistic view is
being taken of the future by many of the workers regarding re-
newals of agreements on present or better terms. It is all but cer-
tain that the anthracite miners will have to make their fight over
again, and the chances are that diggers in bituminous fields will
also be forced to go out. J. Pierpont Morgan, the king bee of the
hard coal field, is organizing his forces, and where independent
concerns cannot be controlled they are bought outright. Thus
Morgan and his friends purchased the Pennsylvania Coal Co., in
the scheme to perfect an air-tight anthracite trust, and paid $276
for shares having face value of $50, or $226 bonus per share for
labor power applied to land. It is stated that the Pennsylvania
Co. stockholders, when bought out, also divided $10,000,000 ac-
cumulated surplus — $100 per share, or 200 per cent — among
themselves. And yet less than two months ago these magnates
claimed they were being "ruined." Other coal and railway com-
panies in the anthracite and bituminous fields are being quietly
absorbed. "I realize we are up against a hard proposition," said
one of the miners' officials, who was active in the Pennsylvania
strike, to the writer recently. "The bosses* are going to make a
stand from present appearances, and, as there will be no important
political campaign on next year, we will not have the support of
certain interests that were so solicitous for our welfare last fall.
Our main dependence will be in holding our people together if the
fight comes, and in receiving aid from our fellow-workers, for,
God knows, the miners are not able to accumulate much of a strike
fund from the small wages that they average. Of course, we will
also hav« the sympathy of the public on our side, but unless that
takes some substantial form it does not amount to very much."
The big strike of iron workers at Mingo Junction, Ohio, is off
after marry months of hard fighting. As at other points, the men
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480 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
were compelled to accept a reduction averaging about 28 per cent.
This unexpected reduction in the iron industry throughout the
country, immediately following the "fool dinner pail" campaign,
has created an upheaval in organized circles, and the air is rife with
secession talk. In Pennsylvania there is especially bitter talk
among the workers and disorganization is following.
Eastern railways are experimenting with an invention to in-
crease the power of steam. It is claimed that trains will be run
from New York to Buffalo without taking on coal or water by the
new system, and that the saving will be immense. The demand for
cheaper locomotive power is encouraging hundreds of inventors
to exploit various theories. One of the latest schemes is to har-
ness the ocean. The National Sea Power Co. has been incorpo-
rated in New Jersey, and the purpose of the concern is to "own
wave motors and to operate wave motors by ocean power," to
build and operate all sorts of machinery, to gather from the sea
power "by which machinery, railroad cars, or any other apparatus
can be moved or operated." The idea of utilizing the waves of
the ocean is not a new one, and the probability of transmitting
electricity over long distances is by no means a dream.
Mining machinery continues to steadily encroach upon the
pick miners. Last year fully 25 per cent more coal was mined by
machinery than in the year previous, and operators declare that
this year the showing will be still better.
Martin Irons died in Texas recently in poverty. He will be re-
membered as the chief official in the big Southwestern railway
strike, when the K. of L. was in its prime, and when Jay Gould
and several of the then large magnates made up their minds to
smash the noble order, just as they later destroyed the A. R. U.,
when it became a menace, and just as they will attempt to do the
same thing to other organizations in the future when their inter-
ests are even only slightly jeopardized.
Just after the Supreme Court of Ohio decided that the miners'
anti-screen law was unconstitutional, along comes the Illinois Su-
preme Court and picks up the law to protect wage-workers from
discharge for belonging to labor organizations and dashes it to
smithereens, declaring that it is "special legislation" and gives
some employers undue advantages over others. More good union
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THE WORLD OF LABOR 431
money gone — spent in lobbying for laws with which capitalistic
judges may amuse themselves. And while the Illinois court fol-
lowed the Ohio court in pitching brickbats at our unions, the lead-
ership was reversed on another important matter, i. e., no sooner
had the Illinois court given the State anti-trust law its quietus, by
deciding that trusts are not illegal institutions, thus setting all the
corporation lawyers and their corpulent employers dancing for
joy, than the Ohio court decides that the Standard Oil octopus,
after seven years of open defiance, bribery and boodling, is not
guilty of contempt of court, and Attorney-General Sheets throws
in a Christmas present by declaring that the trusts cannot be pros-
ecuted because of "insufficient evidence," and, anyhow, they are
really not trusts, but merely large corporations, and, therefore,
not illegal ! Let those who voted the ticket of one or the other of
the old parties, with the expectation that the trusts would be wiped
off the earth instanter and the workingman made happy by favor-
able legislation and consideration at the hands of courts, view this
contrast.
In the month of November the total capital incorporation
amounted to $148,150,000, bringing the grand total for eleven
months in the year up to $2,217,550,000. Nearly twice as much
capital was incorporated in West Virginia as in New Jersey. Since
the publication of the former figures it is announced that the in-
dependent telephone and cable companies are being merged into
a $50,000,000 trust, that British capitalists absorbed the Cramps'
shipyards and organized a $20,000,000 shipbuilding trust, that a
$25,000,000 Carolina pine trust is being formed, and that Rocke-
feller's copper interests are to be combined with independent con-
cerns and a huge trust to be launched.
The big niolders* strike in Cleveland continues, and the foun-
drymen of the nation and the journeymen in the local unions are
aiding their respective sides with all the moral and financial aid
possible. The Chicago building trades struggle also continues,
and both sides are straining every nerve to secure temporary ad-
vantages. The New York cigarmakers are winning their strikes,
as several more firms yielded during the past month.
The cotton mill operators of North Carolina have won their
lockout, and 5,000 men, women and children are driven back to
work, while their officers and all active agitators are blacklisted
and driven from the State. The cause of the strike was the quiet
attempt of the operatives to organize for the purpose of securing
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432 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
the abatement of intolerable conditions. Men were bullied, women
insulted, and in some instances even robbed of their virtue by dis-
reputable overseers, and children were flogged and overworked.
The bosses understood the situation, but when the employes in
one mill in Burlington demanded the discharge of a particularly
obnoxious overseer, the former quickly combined and locked out
the workers, evicted them from the company houses, and actually
starved them into submission. It is hardly probable that any re-
forms will be inaugurated. Russia can boast of no more slavish
conditions than the "red shirt," disfranchising, Bourbon State
of North Carolina.
The "free" silver smelters of Colorado are reported as having
given their employes notice of a New Year's present in the shape
of a reduction of 75 cents to $1.00 a day. The workers declare
they will not submit, as the price of necessities of life have been
and are still raising. On the other hand, it is announced in Wall
street that several large independent concerns will be taken into
the silver smelters' trust, and after the reorganization the price of
silver will be advanced. It's 16 to 1 that the capitalists will come
out on top, no matter which game they play.
A bolt occurred in the convention of the Ohio Federation of
Labor last month. The seceders claim that Republican officials
control the body and that they will perfect a new organization.
Trouble has been brewing for some time, and the split came when
the printers attempted to secure the adoption of a resolution con-
demning the State administration for patronizing notorious non-
union printing firms.
Another batch of new Social Democratic papers : Idaho Area,
Stuart, Idaho, formerly Democratic; New Era, Sargent, Neb.,
formerly fusion; Workers' Gazette, Omaha; New Dispensation,
Springfield, Mass. ; Justice, Evansville, Ind. ; The Propagandist,
Central City, Col.
Forty large brickyards in New England States will be com-
bined with the New York brick trust, operating thirty-five plants,
controlled by Standard Oil capital. Small yards will be closed and
prices will be raised.
A machine has been given a successful trial in a plant at Hart-
ford City, Ind., which, it is claimed, will displace all boys engaged
in shuttling mold9 in bottle factories.
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SOCIALISM AND RELIGION
Professor George D. Herron
J HE word religion, when hunted back to its source,
means relations. In its genesis, before it becomes
official and authoritative, every religion is the search
of some man or men for more harmonious relations
with our human environment. To find out what sort of a uni-
verse we live in and effect a mutual adaptation between our-
selves and it, — to learn just what facts and forces we have to
deal with and then work with them, — this is the hidden mean-
ing of all religions, no matter how ignorant or tyrannical their
historical development. And the world will never be without
a religion ; for, in its last analysis, religion is simply a science of
life, a finding out how to live. Life cannot get on without re-
ligion; that is, it cannot get on without self-knowledge. To
say that life depends upon religion is merely to say that the
quality of life depends upon the quality of our knowledge of
life. To live at all, in any worthful sense, is to be religious.
II.
If we had a real science of society, we should have therein a
statement of religion. But we have not ; there is yet no sociol-
ogy worthy of the name, or deserving of man's intellectual or
moral respect. We have a lot of academic jargon, wrought out
upon foundations capitalized by the existing society, but no
honest or intellectual account of what society is, or of what it
ought to be. We can expect a free science and a free religion,
and a free art and free literature as well, only when we have a
free society. For the noblest thinker is more or less directed
by the economic sources from which he draws his sustenance.
III.
Socialism t will have a religious outcome, depend upon that.
Socialists cannot prevent it, nor can any materialistic philos-
ophy. Indeed, materialism is but the recrumbled soil from
which a nobler and honester spirituality is yet to spring. I do
not mean that socialism will take on a religion ; that would be
fatal. Nor do I mean that it will become religious, in the usual
488
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484 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
sense of that word. I mean that it will generate a religion
from within itself. In its essence, socialism is a religion, with
a very pronounced faith. Elementally, it is identical with the
idea and faith which Jesus proclaimed — not the church- That is,
it believes that co-operation, fellowship, brotherhood, mutuality
of interest and responsibility, freedom and friendship as social
order, to be more practicable and trustworthy in world-organi-
zation and administration than competition, economic and social
enmity, and the struggle of each man for himself. Precisely this
is involved in what Jesus meant by the kingdom of God, or
the kingdom of the universally good, although He spoke in
oriental terms, and made no application of His idea to the prob-
lem of social organization. Not that Jesus was a socialist;
that He was not, and it is wholly incorrect to call Him such. If
we were obliged to catalogue Him by modern terms, we should
have to call Him a communist-anarchist in His philosophy. But
the elemental faith on which Jesus rested is identical with the
elemental faith of socialism — one expressing that faith in terms
of spiritual principle, and the other expressing it in terms of
materialistic philosophy. Each expression comes to this:
That a co-operative or harmonious organization of life is more
practicable and liberating, more productive of the common good
and of great individuality, than a competitive and individualistic
organization. Jesus would call this the law of love. In mod-
ern economic terms, it is socialism. However widely apart
their outlook and spiritual philosophy, Jesus and socialism
affirm the same organizing life-principle. And that which Christ
and socialism affirm, the institution of Christianity garbles or
denies. What the church at best presents as a mongrel senti-
ment, socialism presents as a scientific fact.
IV.
The capitalistic society is ethically bankrupt. " A large part of
human activity is now without any guiding and liberating prin-
ciple of conduct. Standards of moral value which served very
well in the past, during the centuries when society was slowly
emerging from slavery, are valueless and vicious now. Morali-
ties of yesterday are immoral to-day, and destructive of the lib-
erty and integrity of the soul. Some of the sternest virtues
of the past are to-day prostituting and disintegrating to human
life. We forget that there is no such a thing as a fixed ethic,
but that human society must constantly enlarge its experience
and thought of the good; constantly transvalue its spiritual
values ; constantly widen the sphere of individual choice. We
see the approaching economic crisis of society, but do not so
clearly see its nearing religious and ethical crisis — a crisis which
will take the word of custom for nothing, but will examine
clean to the roots every received notion of right and wrong.
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SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 485
We face the future with heaviness of spirit, and without faith or
fervor, because we do not see that new standards and a new
spirit are required to create a new order. We cannot win the
battle for a free society with the ethics and weapons of a slave
society. We cannot keep up our courage, and sing with the
joy of battle, if we repeat the tactics and morals of the ex-
hausted civilization from which we seek escape. We have ethics
and religions that answered during the long evolution from
slavery; but we have no religions or ethical synthesis fit for
the inspiration and practice of free men. Unmindful of this,
socialists themselves are constantly and vainly seeking to ad-
vance their cause by the most vicious capitalistic and ecclesi-
astical ethics of the system they seek to overthrow.
Let us consider, for instance, our behavior in controversy.
We must confess that we sometimes outdo our capitalistic
enemy in the use of his evil weapons of attack and defense. One
of these is intolerance. Now intolerance is a capitalistic habit
of mind. It grows out of the evil notion that truth is the pri-
vate property of vested interests, and that it is forged for their
defense. The result is that nearly all so-called truth is sub-
sidized truth. Religion, political economy, literature, educa-
tion, all have to pay their tribute of blood money, and submit
to the marks of ownership. The church, which not only de-
pends upon the existing system, but is itself the private capital-
ization and monopolization of common spiritual rights, defends
its spiritual and material possessions with an intolerance as
militant as that of the monopolist of production and govern-
ment. Indeed, religious intolerance is but the ecclesiastical
form of a capitalistic habit of mind. All intolerance springs
from the defense of some sort of possession resting upon doubt-
ful foundations. Every expression of intolerance shows an un-
faith or uneasiness about that which one attacks or defends.
If one is absolutely sure of his ground, he can be boundlessly
patient and tolerant towards those who stand upon some other
ground. Truth is always weakened and obscured by intoler-
ance. If we trust what we call truth, we will trust it to be its
own best defense, and give our time to affirming it and making
it clear- If socialism is to prove itself worthy of human con-
fidence and support, it must carry on its propaganda in a
spirit that will show forth the tolerance and patience, the sweet-
ness and beauty, that belong to all real strength, and that will
be the atmosphere of a free and noble society. If we as social
ists undertake to succeed by the capitalist tactics and ethics
of brute authority, of intolerance and word-slugging, of crush-
ing out independence of thought and inquiry, then we shall
fail, as we ought to fail; for we are then but capitalistic spirits
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436 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
masquerading in socialistic clothes. And the people will not
follow us; for they will not again be led out of one house of
bondage merely to be driven into another.
VI.
We especially need a better ethic of controversy in its more
personal aspects. Sometimes I think the capitalistic world is
getting a little more civilized in this direction than the revolu-
tionary world, though that is not saying much. In any case,
there is nothing we stand in such sore and immediate need of,
just now, as a little human decency in controversy. The habit
of personally assaulting those who differ with us in opinion or
tactics, whether they are among our own comrades, or the
capitalist ranks, is not only brutal and indecent, but it is thor-
oughly capitalistic in spirit and method. Besides, it is the
greatest enemy of socialism. We socialists ourselves, by the
practice of this capitalistic method of personal attack, do more
to drive people from socialism and to aid and comfort and up-
hold capitalism than the whole capitalist host of politicians,
preachers and scribblers. If we wanted to deliberately create
suspicion and distrust toward socialism we could do it in no
surer way. If we wanted to be traitors we could find no more
certain way of betraying and misrepresenting the socialist
movement. How can we possibly win the people to our cause,
if we prejent the spectacle of villifying each other, and settle
our discussions by contests of word-slugging? How can we
bring a man all the way to socialism, if, when we see him half
the way, we immediately fall upon him with bludgeons of
personal abuse, instead of rationally and tolerantly seeking to
lead him the whole way ? It is not our business to judge men
personally, but to affirm and interpret principles. Socialists
have no right to personally attack any man, whether he be in
the capitalist or the socialist ranks. We only weaken our cause
by so doing, and work disintegration in the socialist movement.
We perpetuate the capitalist ethical system, and set at naught
the whole spirit and purport of democracy. If we succeed,
it must be by a spirit that promises liberty and fellowship to
a world sick of abuse and strife, and brutality of spirit in the
relations of men. "Does a man think he loses anything," asks
Professor Sombart, "by conceding that his opponent is an
honorable man, and by assuming that truth and honor will con-
trol the dealings of his adversary? I do not think so. The
man who places himself really in the struggle, who sees that in
all historic strife is the germ of whatever occurs, should be able
to cpnduct this strife in a noble way, to respect his opponent
as a man, and to attribute to him motives no less pure than
his own."
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SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 487
VII.
Class struggle does not mean class hatred, or personal strife.
It means the democratic solidarity of workers in a cause so
just and noble, so confident of victory, that it will need no
weapons of ethic or tactic from the enemy, in order to gain its
great day. Rather, the socialist army can fight in the open,
with the weapons of truth and justice only, and with the spirit
of the new and better chivalry for which the world waits. Nor
does the defense and advance of principle mean personal attack
of any sort, whatsoever. Socialist ethics and tactics should
rather demand the immediate, complete and final end of per-
sonal attack as a rational or worthy method of defense or pro-
gress. As an ethic or tactic, it is unsocialistic, undemocratic,
irrational and destructive only to the cause that makes use of
it. Above all others, socialists should give to the world the
ethic and practice of a chivalrous and manly mode of propa-
ganda. None can so consistently and effectually show forth
the power and beauty of intellectual tolerance and democracy
as those who stand for the co-operative commonwealth. None
can so well afford to make clear that the defense and advance
of principle is one thing, but personal attack and controversy
quite an opposite thing. And by such an attitude, socialists
will be kindling the purifying and enlightening altar-fires of the
human religion that is to be.
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$
BOOK REVIEWS
»
Only books touching some phase of social, educational, eco-
nomic or political subjects will be noticed in this department,
and publishers are invited to send such works to the editor.
Newest England. Henry Demarest Lloyd. Doubleday, Page
& Co. Cloth, 380 pp.
Whatever one may think of the subject matter of this book,
he cannot but admire its literary style. The author has taken
what are practically the dry pages of blue books and made them
throb with life and interest. So entrancing has he made this
tale of facts and statistics that the reader clings to it when once
begun as to a thrilling novel. And in this as well as many
ways, "Newest England" is superior to some of the previous
works by the same author, in that while it has all the charm of
style and interest of his other writings it lacks the hyperbole
and exaggerated form of speech which always served to
fill the reader with a feeling of doubt as to the reliability of
the facts presented. In the same way we do not have the same
boundless adoration of all things New Zealand that is to be
found in "A Country Without Strikes." It is admitted that
there are many flies in the ointment. There is still suffering
and unemployment; laborers are blacklisted and terrorized by
their employers, and crime and poverty are not wholly ban-
ished. Just because of this the book as a whole is much more
valuable than the first one named. And it must be said that
the New Zealanders are doing many remarkable things in the
realm of social and political affairs. They have broken up land
speculation, done away with the contractor on all public works
and permitted the men to be their own co-operative contractor ;
they have "quarantined their country against panics," made the
state a gigantic loan and insurance agency and trust company,
pensioned the "veterans of labor," and in general succeeded in
averting many of the worst of the evils of capitalism. Whether
they are now on the road toward a better organized society,
and whether these movements will lead them into the "co-oper-
ative commonwealth" is another question, and one that the
author does not attempt to answer. It would seem as if what
had been done was to forfeit much of the economy of capitalism
438
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
BOOK REVIEWS 489
in order to get the benefits of competition, and that this tends
rather in the direction of the establishment of a sort of middle-
class competitive paradise that would only be a sort of purga-
tory for the laborer in comparison with the capitalistic hell of
other countries, but a long ways from the possible proletarian
heaven of the co-operative commonwealth.
Plain Talk in Psalm and Fable. By Ernest Crosby. Small,
Maynard & Co. 187 pp., $1.50.
This is a book that will delight the heart of every revolution-
ist and lover of good literature. Written largely in the poetical
style that Whitman and Edward Carpenter have already made
familiar to the readers of revolutionary literature, it has a
charm and a beauty all of its own. There is a thoroughness to
its philosophy that sounds a clear note in the midst of a world
of hollow shams. When he chooses to use the rhyme and
rythm of conventional literature the author shows that he can
wield it as well as the more untrammeled form in which his
thought is generally cast. The socialist will find something
to criticize in the philosophy that seems to underlie some of
the poems. There is a tendency to follow Tolstoi, to whom the
book is dedicated, into the darkness of reaction against all the
good as well as the bad of modern society, while the influence
of Henry George is seen in a tendency to lay all the blame for
modern conditions upon the shoulders of the landlord. But
one cannot argue with a poet nor look too close for logic in
his lines, and the book is one that will live far into the time
when the present revolution shall have come and gone. The
author is certainly one of the prophets of to-day, and we agree
with him that,
"Happy the land that knoweth its prophets before they die !
Happy the land that doth not revile and persecute them dur-
ing their lives !
Was there ever such a land?
We are still engaged in the ancient pastime —
Building the monuments of the prophets of old,
And casting stones at the seers whom we meet in the streets.
In the world's market one dead prophet is worth a dozen of
the living.
Happy the land that knoweth its prophets before they die !"
China's Only Hope. By Viceroy Chang Chih-tung, translated
by Samuel I. Woodbridge. Fleming H. Revell Company.
150 pp.
This is in many ways a remarkable book.Its author, contents
and occasion of composition are all out of the ordinary, and
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440 TNTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
its reception in its native land was correspondingly great. It
is stated that over one million copies were sold in China and
that it was in no small degree responsible for the anti-foreign
outbreak that led up to the present situation, — the "boxer"
movement being a reaction against its influence. The book,
while from the socialist standpoint extremely conservative, is
from the orthodox Chinese position fundamentally revolution-
ary. It advocates the opening of China to Western influences
while maintaining Confucianism, the reigning dynasty and the
ancient classics. Whether the Viceroy really thought this
furiously fomenting new wine of the West could really be con-
tained in these extremely old bottles, or whether he was merely
trying to keep his head on his shoulders while preaching his
reforms, no one can say. He advocates the transformation of
the system of education by the introduction of scientific sub-
jects and then including these same subjects in the great so-
called "civil service" examinations for official appointments.
There is no doubt but what this constitutes the most powerful
means with which to accomplish a sudden internal revolution
ever known in any country, and could his ideas be carried out
a few years would serve to make the Western learning pene-
trate to every corner of the Middle Kingdom. He urges that
the Buddhist monks be disestablished and their lands confis-
cated to meet the expense of the new schools this plan will
render necessary, — something that sounds very much like the
procedure of the present capitalist class in their early days, save
that their object was much less desirable. He strongly advo-
cates the building of railways, foreign travel and the transla-
tion of books, and shrewdly suggests that advantage be at once
taken of the similarity of the Chinese and Japanese languages
and customs to first secure the knowledge already acquired
by the latter for the benefit of China. He often makes mis^
takes of an obvious character in describing foreign institutions
and customs and then again he gives expression to some very
shrewd observations, as when he says: "If countries are
equally matched, then international law is enforced ; otherwise
the law is inoperative. For what has international law to do
with fighting issues when one country is strong and another
weak?"
Commercialism and Child Labor. By the City of London
Branch, I. L. P. 16 pp., one penny.
This is one of a series of short leaflets issued by this same
branch and has very much valuable information concerning the
extent of child labor in Great Britain, and suggests many im-
provements in existing legislation. It, however, contains noth-
ing that could not be accepted by any bourgeois reformer and
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BOOK RE VIE WS 441
would scarcely be called a socialist pamphlet outside of Eng-
land.
The Living Wage, and Real Socialism, are two pamphlets
by Robert Blatchford, published by the International Publish-
ing Company at five cents each. The first of these shows the
author at his worst and is principally rot, being based neither
on socialism nor any known system of capitalist economics,
while the second is an excellent little propaganda leaflet and
one that deserves a wide sale. It fills that "long-felt want"
which has so often been attempted, — the need of an elementary
explanation, easily understood, of socialism. While there are
some defects in the author's position, yet these are not of a na-
ture to cause great injury and the charm of his style will lead
on to further and more scientific socialist writings. Another
pamphlet of the same price and size is "A Socialist's View of
Religion and the Churches," by Tom Mann. This is a keen
discussion in simple workingmen's language of the subject
named and is an important addition to the stock of propaganda
literature of American socialism.
Expansion Under New World Conditions. Rev. Josiah Strong.
Baker & Taylor Company. Cloth, 310 pp., $1.00. Paper,
50 cents.
Without any hesitation it should be said that every socialist
should at once read and master this latest discussion of the
most prominent phase of capitalist word politics. Beginning
with the proof of the fact that American labor is the cheapest
in the world, he goes on to show the burning need of world
markets in which to dispose of the surplus labor extracted
from that very cheap worker. On the first point he gives the
following somewhat suggestive statistics : "Reducing all energy
to a common standard, it is found that in the United States the
productive energy of each inhabitant is 1,940 foot-tons daily,
while in Europe it is only 990 foot-tons for each inhabitant.
This means that the working power of 75,000,000 Americans is
equal to that of 150,000,000 Europeans." He works out at
considerable length the means by which the surplus labor-
power of the capitalist are increased by increased hours of labor,
although he neglects to give credit to Marx for the idea he is
developing. "The profits are well established according to
the tonnage put through. If the run is 600 tons per day the
profits are $5,000 per month. If the run is 900 tons per day,
the profits are $20,000 per month." But it is in his descrip-
tions of the wonderful opportunities offered by the just devel-
oping trade of the Pacific that he waxes eloquent. The re-
sources to be developed in the lands bordering this great high-
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442 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
way of commerce and the conditions necessary to its develop-
ment are most graphically set forth. "Since time became the
measure of distance the Pacific has shrunk until now it is only
one-half as large as the Mediterranean was in the days of clas-
sic Greece. For a 21-knot vessel can steam 10,000 miles, from
Cape Horn to Yokahoma in twenty days, which is one-half the
time it took the old Greek merchant or pirate to sail 2,000 miles
from the Phenician coast to the Pillars of Hercules." He ap-
parently adopts the materialistic interpretation of history in
its entirety. "We are only beginning to appreciate that indus-
try — the way in which people get their living — is the funda-
mental factor in civilization. . . .Different causes have had vary-
ing values in various stages of civilization, but there is one
cause which is constant because there is one want which is
absolutely universal and that is something to eat" Yet after
constructing his entire book on this hypothesis he has to sugar-
coat it with a sort of Deus ex machina and talks of all this de-
velopment occurring "notwithstanding human foresight" and
in general using the antiquated "argument from design." So
evidently is this in absolute contradiction with all else that he
says that one almost wonders if the author is in earnest and
really blind to these incongruities, or whether he is only drag-
ging them in to help the bourgeois consciences of his readers.
The following books have also been received and where their
importance demands will be reviewed at length in future num-
bers:
"Fruitfullness," Emile Zola, translated by Ernest Alfred
Vizetelly ; Doubleday, Page & Co. ; cloth, 487 pp., $2.00.
"The Story of Nineteenth Century Science," Henry Smith
Williams ; Harper & Brothers ; cloth, 475 pp., $2.50.
"The Real Chinese Question," Chester Holcombe; Dodd,
Mead & Co.; cloth, 386 pp., $1.50.
"The Ethics of Evolution," James Thompson Bixby; Small,
Maynard & Co.; cloth, 315 pp., $1.25.
"Our Nation's Need," J. A. Conwell; J. S. Oglive; cloth,
251 PP-
"Solaris Farm ; A Story of the Twentieth Century," Milan C.
Edson; published by the author at 1728 North Jersey avenue,
N. W.. Washington, D. C.
AMONG THE PERIODICALS
The World's Work, with only its second number yet published,
has at once stepped into the very front rank of present-day
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BOOK REVIEWS- 448
publications. Its department on "The March of Events" is
certainly one of the best if not the best of the many attempts
at summarizing current happenings. The article by Paul S.
Reinsch on "Political Changes of the Century" is an historical
sketch of the development of nationalism out of the Napoleonic
era, the rise and fall of bourgeois liberalism, the origin and
growth of the policy of expansion and present division between
socialism and capitalism. But it is in the department "Among
the World's Workers" that the socialist will find most of value.
The sub-title of this gives an idea of its contents. It runs,
"The Advance of American Commerce, Ship-building, Railway
Consolidation, Financial Independence of Europe — The Move-
ment of Prices — The Growth of Cities." Everything is treated
with a masterly thoroughness and a clear-cut capitalist concep-
tion, that for him who can read it aright forms a wondrous
picture of the continuous onward sweep of capitalism.
Articles of note in the current number of The International
Monthly are "The International Position of Spain at the Close
of the XlXth Century" by Arthur E. Houghton; "The
Evolutionary Trend of German Literary Criticism," a masterly
article by Prof. Kuno Franke, of Harvard University; and a
most contemptible, but none the less interesting, article by
Booker T. Washington on "The American Negro and His Eco-
nomic Value," in which he carries his disgusting work of acting
the decoy duck of capitalism to the extreme of demonstrating
that his race have an economic value to their exploiters and
oppressors.
The Annals of the American Academy contain one very im-
portant and valuable article, — "The Financial Aspects of the
Trust Problem," by Edwin Sherwood Meade. In cold, pitiless
analysis he sets forth the entire internal process of the forma-
tion of these gigantic concentrations. There is one phase
which he points out that is particularly interesting. He shows
that in the formation of the trust the owners of the original
plants were paid with the preferred stock while the issues of
common stock constituted simply an enormous mass of "gold
bricks" to be disposed of on the unsuspecting lambs. He
shows at great length the various ways in which this new
South Sea bubble was floated. It is particularly interesting to
note the classes who were caught. "Trust securities cannot
be sold to the true investor." .... "A minister or a merchant
has a few thousands laid by, a woman has saved or inherited
a small amount, a workman or a farmer has managed to scrape
together a few dollars for a rainy day Their lives are hard,
monotonous and infinitely barren. Before their eyes is con-
stantly flaunted the seductive spectacle of leisure class consump-
tion, spurring on their desires, which are certain in any event
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444 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
to outrun their means. To such people the prospectus of a
new enterprise is wonderfully attractive. In exchange for a
few thousands it offers them a fortune. The offer dazzles them,
Their desires benumb their small judgments. .. .The influence
which can be exerted in favor of the new securities is some-
thing tremendous. There need be no direct solicitation; that
would be undignified and might make trouble between friends
if anything went wrong.... The underwriters and those who
are interested in selling stock had only to let it be known that
they considered the trust stock a 'good thing' to gather in the
wool of the whole country. . . .The trust stock has now been put
upon the market The firm owners, the underwriters and the
promoters have the cash. The next thing in order is the pay-
ment of dividends. . . .Something has evidently gone wrong. . . .
Not a single one of the combinations organized since 1898 has
paid a good return on its capital stock. Out of seventy-eight
combinations listed on the New York Stock Exchange there are
only two whose common stock bears a price of over 50. Most
of the others are worth less than 40 Here is Empire Steel
for which 3 is offered, U. S. Leather selling at 9, Natural Starch
at 6, and Union Steel and Chain at 3 It is the South Sea
Company and the Louisiana bubble over again ; the same pros-
pectus, the same promises, the same pointing to the eminence
of the promoters and their high character and financial stand-
ing.... So far as the preferred stock is concerned the result
has borne out the representations. Preferred dividends have
been earned and paid as promised. . . .The buyer of industrial
common stock has been sacrificed on the altar of a new form of
industrial organization The common stock, it is safe to say,
will in the great majority of cases, be almost obliterated We
should acquit the managers of any sinister designs on the com-
mon stock as stock. Their antagonism is only toward the
holders thereof. If they were perfectly certain that the pre-
ferred dividends would be earned, and that something would
always remain for the common, they would retain the common
or buy it in after depressing its value The common stock
buyer, at heavy cost to himself, has performed a most valuable
service to the community in that he has paid off the mortgages
on most of the plants, and has placed them in a condition where,
with ordinary caution, they are safe from bankruptcy." These
sentences, gleaned here and there through the fifty-nine pages
of the article, give some idea of the valuable matter it contains
for those who are looking for instances of the rapid wiping out
of the small capitalist.
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EDITORIAL
*
FINANCIAL SITUATION OF THE MONTH
has been a fairly regular and continuous increase
prices of all the necessaries of life during the past
as in the previous year. Trade journals and
Review report an increase of from three to five
per cent in all cotton goods and an average of two and a half cents
each, wholesale, on boots and shoes during November and De-
cember. All kinds of meats have increased in price, pork having
reached the highest price known for years. Eggs have also been
at record-breaking prices, and the Philips corner in corn sent that
commodity to an extraordinary height. Although fluctuations in
other less essential lines have reduced the "index-number" indi-
cating general prices, as computed by the Bureau of Economic
Research somewhat below what it was a few months ago, yet it still
indicates a general increase of prices of nearly 25 per cent during
the eighteen months just past.
On the other hand, the Massachusetts Labor Bulletin, in a
study of 72,704 of the most favored laborers belonging to unions
in the skilled trades of that State, found an increase of wages dur-
ing the three months ending November first (which were the
months of the most rapid increase during the last year) of only a
trifle over 4 per cent. Compilations from other sources show that
the total increase of average wages during the past year has been
from 3 to 5 per cent, which would mean a falling off in actual
wages of nearly 20 per cent during this time of "unexampled
prosperity." Furthermore, the papers in December have been
filled with stories of widespread reductions in wages, now that
election is over and laborers' votes are no more in demand.
The New York Bulletin of Labor Statistics for December,
embracing 245,332 laborers, shows that the number of unem-
ployed has increased, wages decreased and number of members
of trades-unions fallen off in that state during the last three
months. All these features were expressly noticeable toward
the close of the quarter. Nearly all the trades show this falling
445
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416 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
off and the report adds that "the gains are either small or else
characterize trades in which the statistics are less trustworthy
than the average/ *
This situation gives the American capitalist of to-day the
cheapest labor on ear ch, because, while the American laborer re-
ceives a little higher nominal wage than those of other countries,
he produces so much more that his relative share is much less.
Says Josiah Strong, in his recent work on "Expansion," "The
average American farm laborer produces four times as much of
food products as the average European farm laborer. One Amer-
ican miner raises 400 tons of ore annually, the German 287, the
English 285, and the French 210. * * * With the best tools,
with the most scientific and ingenious machinery, with the most
intelligent and nimble workmen, it becomes possible for us to pay
higher wages and yet enjoy the advantage of the lowest labor
cost." American capitalists are thus able to flood the markets of
the world with the products of American laborers. German,
French and English trade journals are now all complaining of a
trade depression due to American competition. Many great Brit-
ish manufacturers are discussing the question of coming to Amer-
ica to share in the advantage of docile American labor.
This more thorough exploitation of American laborers is only
allowed to benefit the large capitalists. The small producers are
being crowded out with ever greater rapidity. Dun's Review for
the month of November shows that there were 850 failures, with
an average capitalization of $14,471. As $50,000 is the very lowest
sum that can be considered effective business capital in this coun-
try to-day, it is evident that the real capitalist remains practically
unscathed. The closer the figures are examined the more evident
this becomes. Dividing the failures into those in trade and in
manufacturing some idea is gained of the ravages of the depart-
ment stores and the mail order houses. Leaving out two failures,
one of $2,000,000 in dry goods and the other of $554,000 in liquors,
and there are left for the month of November 614 failures among
the trading class averaging $2,513. That firms of this size are not
even considered as constituent parts of the business world of to-
day is shown by the fact that the journal publishing these com-
ments as follows : "But legitimate business as a whole enjoyed
a most satisfactory month." Poor little bourgeois, he is not even
engaged in "legitimate business" if he cannot fail for more than
a hundred thousand dollars. According to Bradstreets the first
two weeks of December continue this tale in spite of "Christmas
prosperity." In these two weeks there were 471 failures, of which
not one reached $100,000, while 416 were for $5,000 or less. Here
is a story of the slaughter of commercial innocents that should
go far in convincing the small bourgeois that capitalist business is
no longer "practicable" for them.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDITORIAL 447
From New York, Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco
come simultaneous reports of "crusades" being waged against
vice. These spasms come with about the same regularity and
leave about the same results as new slang phrases, popular
songs and the latest things in neckties. They are the climaxes
in the great farce of enforcing capitalist morality. To be sure
their uselessness is now so thoroughly recognized that even
the newspapers that advocate them on the front page allow their
humorists to make sport of them on the last page. Every one
knows that with the approach of next season there will be more
terrible exposures of what every one always knew existed ; that
the well-known fact will be once more discovered that the police
are in league with the "criminals," and some sensational preach-
er will go slumming in company with the reporter for some
yellow journal (who will see to it that the preacher's picture
appears in the next morning's issue) and the "crusade" will be
once more launched. Here and there will be found a bour-
geois reformer who has sufficient intelligence to notice that it
is only the vices of the poor that are to be reformed. It is the
"policy shop" and not the board of trade that is to be closed
up ; it is the "all-night saloon" and not the all-night club that
is to be suppressed ; and it is the hold-up man and not the "pro-
moter" that is to be captured. But when it comes to the so-
called "social evil," which it is admitted is the one vice especially
pretended to be attacked, the socialist is the only one who dares
to speak a consistent word, because he alone approaches the
subject in the light of the doctrine of the class struggle. He
is the only one that dares to point out, not simply that the poor
victims who are hounded from street to jail, and from foul dives '
to yet fouler police stations, in order that some notoriety-seek-
ing reformer may pay off old political debts or create new
capital, are the creatures of the capitalist system that is now
persecuting them, but he also dares to call attention to the fact
that prostitution itself is but the capitalistic form of the age-
old tribute of virtue that the ruling classes have ever extorted
from their slaves. So evident is this and so thoroughly "class
conscious" are the would-be reformers that not one of these
sanctimonious sensationalists has ever dared to suggest that
the bourgeois men be proceeded against equally with the prole-
tarian women. If this fact stood alone in the midst of our com-
plex civilization with all others against it, it would still consti-
tute an eternal and irrefutable proof of the philosophy of the
class struggle.
Something over a year ago the teachers in the public schools
of Chicago decided that the remuneration they were receiving
for their services was altogether too small. As there was no
doubt of the facts they had the "sympathy of the public" with
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448 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE \¥
them at the start. So they formed a Teachers' Federation,
which was much more dignified than a trade union, just the
same as a * 'profession* ' is superior to a ' 'trade* ' and a "position* '
many degrees higher than a "job." The Federation organized,
asked for an increase of salary, and were met with much sympathy
and encouragement but still less wages than heretofore.
Mayor Harrison wrote them a very polite and encouraging
note, expressing himself as being wholly in sympathy with their
plans and painting some rather rosy pictures of how much it
would mean to the city of Chicago and its schools and pupils
if the teachers were only adequately paid. This was some time
ago. The teachers began to ask annoying questions regarding
the reasons why a great and wealthy city like Chicago could
not afford to pay its teachers sufficient to enable them to live
decently. Then they made the remarkable discovery, which
almost every one has known all the time, that the wealthiest
citizens of Chicago and the great corporations did not like to
be bothered with such small matters as taxes* and so had left
their payment to the small bourgeoisie. But these latter are
growing beautifully less each year and so the receipts from tax-
ation were also diminishing. Hence the teachers set about it
through their Federation to secure the taxation of this hith-
erto exempted property. The socialist will at once notice thq
line of evolution. Starting as a "pure and simple union" they
were rapidly drifting into capitalist politics, and as the fight
grew warmer, outlines of the class struggle began to appear.
Then it was that things took another turn. The teachers se-
cured a list of millions of dollars of property that was escaping
taxation and demanded that it l>e placed upon the tax list. At
once the attitude of the "friendly powers" underwent a change.
Carter Harrison announced that he would "make it hot for
any teacher that meddled too much with this taxation busi-
ness." F. J. Loesch, trustee of the Board of Education, de-
clared that the teachers had no business in politics and de-
nounced the whole principle of a teachers' federation, declar-
ing that "its purpose and action are destructive of discipline,
good order and education." Whether any large number of the
teachers will be intelligent enough to follow out the line of
reasoning upon which they have entered and unite their ener-
gies with the whole great body of laborers in an effort to over-
throw the capitalist domination against which they are now
vainly battering their heads, it is too early to say, but the fact
that it has been several times suggested that the Teachers'
Federation secure a charter from the A. F. of L. and that a
few were even bold enough to suggest a strike indicates that
the crust of bourgeois teaching is being broken through here
and there.
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TS2 INTERNATIONAL
SOCIALIST REVIEW
Vol. I FEBRUARY, 1901 No. 8
The United States and World Politics
T is a commonplace for socialist writers to say that
capitalism has enlarged the social unit with the ex-
pansion of the market from the village and neighbor-
hood to the full circumference of the globe, and wip-
ing out all lines of division has made of the entire earth one
vast community. Questions of policy, lines of divergent inter-
ests, ethical, religious and governmental problems have all fol-
lowed the growth of industry, and the whole social drama is
enlarged to this same gigantic scale. "All the world's a stage/'
in which nations, armies, peoples and races are not simply play-
ers but largely puppets in the control of the tremendous indus-
trial forces that govern the capitalist world.
While, however, these things have long been spoken of as
if actually in existence, yet it has really been only within the
last few years that they have been great and present facts.
European writers have discussed "world politics" for a genera-
tion, but as so often happens, they thought of their own circle
of existence as all of life, and never realized that not only was
a great portion of the capitalist earth outside their line of vis-
ion, but that the major portion of the earth's surface was, as
yet, well-nigh untouched by capitalism. While the United
States had reached a greater degree of capitalist development
than any European nation, it was still very largely iso-
lated from them. Only when by virtue of the great fertility
of its virgin soil combined with an extensive system of mechan-
ical agriculture it was enabled to invade the market with cheap
cereals and intensify the already almost unbearable sufferings
of the European peasant, or when the Civil War created a
cotton famine in English factories did the industrial or social
life of America intrude itself upon the view of European eco-
449
450 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
nomic or political writers. The United States was considered
only as a source of raw materials for the workshops of the "old
world/' or as an escape valve for the proletarian of Europe
when oppression passed the endurance point in his native
land.
The "world" of these writers was also limited by the fact
that the major portion of the earth, not yet brought under the
sway of capitalism, was practically outside their circle of in-
dustrial and social life. The whole theatre of the "world poli-
tics" of ten years ago was confined to what is now known as
western Europe, with its fartherest reach in a discussion of
an "Eastern Question" having its seat but a three days' rail-
road journey from the other extreme limit of their world. This
Eastern Question was located at the point where the capital-
ism of western Europe was coming in contact with barbaric
Russia and seeking to block her efforts to obtain an outlet to
the sea. As for Russia herself, she was only thought of as a
half-savage monster that swallowed up Napoleonic armies or
belched forth hordes of ferocious Cossacks, but never really
played a part in the basic social and industrial drama. Africa
was a "dark continent," the home of the slave trade and buried
civilizations, of interest only to the just arising science of archae-
ology and the Geographical Society, but never thought of as
an essential factor in the social life of the world. Australia,
only on a smaller scale, was, like America, but an European
"colony," with no initiative or individuality in the family of
nations. As for Asia, embracing well-nigh one-third the entire
land surface of the globe and one-half the population, this did
not belong to the world of these writers at all.
Turning now to the United States, the same insular point
of view is seen. A decade ago, the majority of American writ-
ers affected a sort of supercilious contempt for all other na-
tions and prided themselves on their isolation. There was a
sort of universal "Monroe Doctrine" prevailing in all lines
of thought. The economic base of this is to be found in the
self-sufficiency of American industrial life. This, in turn, can-
not be understood without a thorough comprehension of the
one great fact of American history, — the fact of its continuous
westward growth. The United States has always had, upon
its very industrial borders, and within its political boundaries,
a larger "foreign market" than almost any other nation on
earth has been able to secure. The manufacturers of the east-
ern seaboard of the United States, at a time when they were
looked upon as practically isolated from the "world market,"
were really producing for almost as large, and varied a class of
customers as were to be found within the "world market" of
England. It must be remembered in this connection that the
area of the United States is practically the same as that of
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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD POLITICS 451
the entire continent of Europe and that its climate and soil
offers even a greater variety of conditions and wants to be ful-
filled.
Thus it is seen that all previous conceptions of world politics
have been ridiculously narrow, — narrow because they did not
even include all, or even the greater part of capitalism, — nar-
rower still because the influence of capitalism itself was con-
fined to but an extremely small portion of the inhabited globe.
Hence it was but natural that these last few years should see a
sudden shifting of the scenes in this great drama, and we are
presented with the view of a titanic conflict between forces
hitherto outside the scope of vision of European diplomatists
and political writers, and on a field not even included in their
mental map of the world.
The industrial causes which led to this revolution in the polit-
ical and social outlook have been mainly the resultant of what
may justly be called the two great facts in capitalist develop-
ment in the last half of the nineteenth century — the entrance
of America into the world market and the capitalistic awaken-
ing of Russia.
RUSSIA.
The latter of these is without doubt one of the most dra-
matic events in the history of the world. First there is fierce
brute struggle to escape from the political, climatic and geo-
graphical walls that rise on every side, and to simply secure
the free breath of the outer air. To the north, Arctic rigor
of climate joined hands with political enemies to keep her from
the open sea. But the great ice-breaking steamers promise to
extend the short summer of five months to a continuous sea-
son so far as navigation is concerned. Few things in the pro-
saic history of commerce reach as thrilling a height as the story
of the entrance of the first of these ice-breakers into the hith-
erto ice-bound harbors of the north. Here is the description
as published in a contemporary account: "With a roar like
the bursting of an ice-gorge lifted by a spring flood the
"Ermack" recently forced her way into the harbor of Kron-
stadt, Russia, ending an unparalleled journey of 200 miles
through solid ice, all of it being at least five feet thick and that
for fifty miles about ten feet in thickness. To the right and
left she hurled the huge blocks as a locomotive plow throws
the snow. Thousands of people on skates, on dog sleds and
in large and small sleighs and sledges raced with her for the
last nine miles of her course, which she passed over in about
an hour. As she came grandly into port, bells were ringing
from the steeples of the city and of the neighboring St. Peters-
burg, military salutes were echoing for miles along the frozen
shores, and shouts and cheers of welcome were pouring from ^
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462 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
the throats of an excited crowd of many thousands. Her ar-
rival on the 17th of March begins a new era in Russian com-
mercial and naval history."*
Observing before her neighbors of western Europe that
the "world" had grown far beyond the shores of the Mediter-
ranean, she has abandoned, for the moment at least, her effort
to secure Constantinople, and is instead pushing down the
further side of the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, which will
give her what no other European nation can ever hope to
secure, — a route to the ports of southern Asia not controlled
by British guns at Gibralter and Port Said. She is slipping
up through Turkestan to reach the Chinese Empire, the center
of present world-politics, by a "back way" wholly under her
own control. This she is doing by means of a double system
of railways, one projected and surveyed from Moscow direct to
the western borders of Turkestan, and the other already con-
structed to the Caucasus district through Bokhara and Samar-
kand to Andijan almost within the confines of Chinese terri-
tory. Then all the world knows of that mightiest triumph of
railroad construction in this century of railroad building, the
binding together of the greatest of continents with the steel
bands of the Trans-Siberian railroad. From St. Petersburg
this mighty highway stretches on through frozen Tundras and
over mountains to Vladivostock and Port Arthur, more than
6,000 miles, or twice the length of the American trans-conti-
nental roads that were once reckoned among the wonders of
the world. And over this great roadbed American locomotives
are pulling American cars over American steel rails to the seat
of the most titanic commercial conflict of the ages.
All these features give to Russia what has always been the
distinguishing feature of America — a frontier — a "foreign mar-
ket" close at hand, beneath her own flag and developing only
as needed. As the history of America has been the story of
the march of a mighty army to the West, so that of Russia is
the tale of the continuous advance of a people toward the East,
until now the two bodies are meeting on the eastern coast of
Asia and the western shore of the Pacific.
Along with this continuous expansion of Russia there has
taken place an internal revolution of no less importance. Three
years before the Emancipation Proclamation of President
Lincoln, Alexander II. of Russia, in freeing the serfs from their
attachment to the soil and thus converting them into wage-
slaves, took the decisive step from feudalism into capitalism.
Domestic industry began to give place to the factory system,
although the former still prevails to a greater extent than in
any of the western nations, — it being lately estimated that
•Success, May 20, 1899.
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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD POLITICS 458
about 6,000,000 persons were still so employed. But while
there are many fold more persons so engaged than in the
Russian factories, their product is ridiculously low in propor-
tion, — being estimated at about $50,000,000 per year, while the
factory output has arisen from $452,500,000 in 1872 to over
$1,000,000,000 in 1898. Incidentally this gives a graphic illus-
tration of the marvelously increased productive power of labor-
ers under the modern machine system. It is needless to say
that the laborers of Russia, any more than those of the United
States, have not shared to any great degree in their increased
product. Some idea of where this increase has actually gone
is given in the following extract from the report of the United
States Treasury Department on "The Russian Empire," p.
2524: "In no western country, at least at present, are such
large returns obtained, as a rule, upon investments of indus-
trial and commercial capital as in Russia. Profits of 20 per
cent are hardly considered worth troubling about. As an ex-
ample we may quote here the official returns of the profits
made in the textile industry — the most important in Russia.
The Yaroslav cotton factory has yielded to its owners an aver-
age yearly profit during 1891-1893 equal to 36.4 per cent on
its capital stock and 65.5 per cent in 1895. The Ismail factory
gave 45 per cent during the same year, the Russian Cotton
Spinning Company 30 per cent, the Neva 60.5 per cent, Tver 40
per cent, the Baranoff Company 39 per cent, Krenholm 31 per
cent, Zindel Company 46 per cent ; Morozoff & Sons, the larg-
est in Russia in their line, declared a 52 per cent yearly divi-
dend during each of the three years previous to 1895, and 65 per
cent during the latter year. Finally, the Sobin factory gave
the, one might say, incredible figure, were it not for the
official sources, of 144 per cent profit in 1895."
Such tremendous accumulations of "surplus value" need an
outlet. But a barren land is of no value as a "foreign mar-
ket" and so Russia is again imitating America in her coloniza-
tion of Siberia. Just as the capitalist government of the United
States held out all manner of inducements to persuade settlers
to locate in the western states, so the Russian government is
using its autocratic power to transport moujiks to the wilds
of Siberia. In the case of the United States an empire was
given to individual capitalists to secure the building of rail-
ways, while the ruling class of Russia use the government
directly to construct their transportation routes. The cheap
"emigrant rates" of America are being duplicated on the Trans-
Siberian railroad, and many features of the American home-
stead law are proving as valuable to Russian as they once did
to American capitalists in securing the removal of laborers
to localities where their exploitation is more profitable. Since
1894, $2,605,500 have been spent in subventions to rural indus-
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454 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
tries in Siberia. Once there these laborers prove "efficient
and willing workers" at $15 a month, who are "hardy enough
to work out the year round in this climate, to sleep, if neces-
sary, on the hard ground without tents, and to live on dried
black bread and soup meat."
These are some of the characteristics of the land across which
Russia is now moving to play her part in the new world-poli-
tics of the far East. In addition to these advantages of cheap
labor Siberia is a land of almost boundless resources. It pro-
duces one-sixth the gold of the world, and still has countless
veins richer than many of the great California mines, which
are now left untouched because of a present lack of proper
machinery, — which defect, however, will soon be remedied. Its
deposits of iron and coal are absolutely inexhaustible within
any measurable period, while it contains a forest area of some
of the finest timber known to commerce two-thirds as large as
the entire land surface of the United States.
THB UNITED STATES.
Turning again to America, space forbids any extended con-
sideration of the great western movement with its leveling
frontier, grinding away all social differences as the front of a
mighty glacier wears down physical inequalities : the resulting
panorama of historic development from savagery to civilization
which a geographical section of the United States presents, or
the tremendous lesson of social solidarity which the immediate
presence of a hostile environment has taught to those who have
made up the advance guard of the great industrial march toward
the setting sun. These are the things that lie at the very foun-
dation of American social problems, and their proper under-
standing is fundamental to any intelligent appreciation of Amer-
ican society, yet here is not the time nor place for their dis-
cussion and their consideration must be deferred to some future
time. It only remains to point out that this century-long
march has reached its limit and has even leaped from California
to the Philippines and China, after an instant's pause at Hawaii,
and that therefore the American frontier, with all that it sig-
nifies, is now a thing of the past.
It was this fact that forced the United States into the field
of world politics. Her political boundaries having been reached
in her economic development, while that development went on
with ever-increasing energy, there was nothing left to do but
to invade other political boundaries.
But before considering this point it is necessary to glance
further at the economic situation within the United States.
Many writers in treating of the recent trade and territorial
expansion of this country speak as if it were some strange
and unexpected phenomenon and especially as if it betokened
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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD POLITICS 455
some sudden and wonderful increase in production. But while
it is a fact that there has been a rapid increase in the
amount of wealth created by American laborers within the last
few years, it is nevertheless true that long before the present
widespread invasion of the world market that has played such
havoc with previously existing trade arrangements American
manufacturers were already producing for a far larger market
than those of any other country. Already in 1885 they were
surpassed only by the manufacturers of Great Britain in the
quantity of pig iron produced; the respective amounts being,
for the United States 4.040,000 tons and for Great Britain
7420,000 tons, while in 1895, when the United States was still
supposed to be well-nigh shut out from the world market, the
American iron workers produced 9,450,000 tons to 8,020,000
tons for Great Britain. In 1899 the figures were 13,620,703
tons and 9,251,151 tons respectively, while the output of the
United States for 1900 is estimated at 13,750,000 tons, showing
that the increase during this last year that has created such
consternation in the markets of the world has been no more
than in many of the years when production was supposed to
be only for a local demand. The figures for manufactured
iron and steel are even more remarkable. In 1885 the United
States produced 1,710,000 tons to satisfy domestic demands,
while England, who was supposed to be supplying the world,
produced but 1,920,000 tons, and in 1895 the isolated American
manufacturers passed far beyond the output of the "workshops
of the world," producing 6,110,000 tons to England's 3,880,000,
and the American output for 1898 (the latest for which I was
able to secure figures) was 8,932,857 tons.
Turning to commerce, it is a well-known fact that the ton-
nage passing through the Sault Ste Marie canal at the eastern
end of Lake Superior has for many years been far greater
than that passing through the Suez, and that many of the ports
on the great lakes can compare favorably as to tonnage with
the great ocean ports. Besides this it is to be remembered
that the railway traffic of America is each year very much
greater than that of any other nation on the face of the earth.
When it comes to a consideration of natural resources, it
suffices to point out that the United States is not simply the
granary of the world, by virtue of the almost boundless stretch
of her fertile western prairies, but that the coal measures already
explored extend over a territory of 195,000 square miles, an
area greater than that of the whole British Isles, and that no
one has yet pretended to fathom the extent of her iron ores.
Turning to the other factors in the production of wealth,
labor power, again no other country can compare with her as
to cheapness, although this fact has been less widely recog-
nized, owing to the nominally high wages having concealed the
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456 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
fact of high exploitation. Yankee ingenuity is proverbial.
Accustomed through several generations of labor on the fron-
tier to continually measure his strength against nature direct,
and there able to himself reap the full advantage of any im-
provement in production or increase of effort, the American
laborer developed an inventiveness and industry which, now
that he has become a wage-slave, makes him the most valuable
worker to the capitalist the world has yet known. Imbued
with an intense and ridiculous individualism, and ever pursuing
the ignis fatuus of industrial promotion (which again was more
nearly possible during the long years of individual exploita-
tion of natural resources) he can be driven to a degree of exer-
tion undreamed of in other lands. Thus it has come about
that while constantly boasting of his independence he is the
most exploited slave known to history. He has as the crown-
ing glory of a century of development upon a virgin continent,
the fact of having produced more millionaires among his mas-
ters than any producer the world has ever known.
Add to these facts of inexhaustible natural resources, high
mechanical perfection and the cheapest labor on earth, the
further fact that industrial organization has here reached its
most perfect form, and some conception can be gained of the
terrific competing power which can be exercised by this young
giant of the West when he goes forth from his long period of
growth and development into the great world of organized
legalized piracy known as international trade.
This last feature — concentrated, unified and nationally non-
competitive industry — is peculiar to America, and like the other
features noted, owes its origin to the history and geographical
formation of the country. With over 200,000 miles of railway,
an extensive system of inland waterways and nearly one-half the
telegraphic mileage of the globe, every portion of its vast and
diversified domain constituted but a single market, and a mar-
ket so enormous that none but industrial giants can maintain
an existence within the scope of its influence, — it was but a
short process to crush the small bourgeoise to powder and blow
their dust from the mighty wheels of commerce, leaving the
field free to be occupied by the great trusts and combines.
In the discussion of Russia attention was called to the man-
ner in which a despotic government was used to further the
interests of a ruling class. In the United States we have an
example of a republican form of government being used for
the same ends. Through control of the means of communica-
tion of intelligence, a censorship of the press is maintained, as
much more effective as it is more subtle than that of Russia.
And just because this censorship is positive instead of nega-
tive in its action and performs its work under the guise of a
free press it is the more difficult to combat. But at all times
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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD POLITICS 457
and under all conditions modern governments have been but
committees to perform the work of the capitalists as a class.
While American capitalists were developing the "home market"
their government protected them with an almost prohibitive
tariff. When the time came to enter the world market, the
army and navy were at once utilized to conquer distant terri-
tory, and the consular system was transformed into a system
of commercial agencies, that are at once the wonder, admira-
tion and envy of the capitalists of other lands who find despot-
ism a much less pliable instrument for their purposes than a
sham democracy.
EFFECT ON WESTERN EUROPEAN NATIONS.
Before making an examination of the stage on which the
last act in this great drama is to be played, let us glance for a
moment at the effect of these new developments on the "world"
of western Europe. If these nations have received scant con-
sideration so far it is in no spirit of revenge for their long dis-
regard of things American, but because they are destined to
play but minor parts in the scene upon which the curtain is
just rising. England's long and bitter struggle with a handful
of farmers in South Africa is rather a sign than a cause of her
having entered upon the period of national decadence. It does
her no good, as W. T. Stead has pointed out, to have colored
half the maps in the atlas with red pigment, for the principle
of the "open door" deprives her of all commercial advantage in
her own colonies, while even if she should repudiate this prin-
ciple, for which she is now contending so vigorously, it would
avail but little, as customs have ever been found ineffectual
barriers to the all-permeating influence of trade. This is the
age and the environment of commercialism, and the nation that
cannot adapt herself to that environment is not "fitted to sur-
vive." This England, Germany or France cannot do, to say
nothing of the minor states of western Europe. They have not
the combination of natural resources, mechanical skill and cheap
and servile labor, with highly organized and concentrated indus-
try, which the new conditions of survival demand. Hence it is
that European trade journals, as well as sensational news sheets,
are bemoaning the decline in industrial prosperity. Germany
is on the verge of a commercial crisis, and a late governmental
report contains a communication from a delegate, who had just
returned from a tour of the United States, declaring that the
American "will in a very little while conquer the world mar-
kets," and that "against this industrial invasion our customs
impost will avail as little as our grain imposts have done." It
is interesting to read further on in the same report that "the
fear of the American industrial invasion should lead us, and all
European countries, to a close union with Russia." But he
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468 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
seems to overlook the fact that in national dealings, still less
than in those of individuals, do altruistic motives prevail,
and he does not mention what inducements would be held out
to Russia to convince her of the desirability of the proposed
alliance.
Illustrations of the sale of American products in the very
centers of European production, as well as in the more distant
markets that have always been considered the exclusive prop-
erty of English or German factories, are now so common as
scarce to need mention. American steel rails and cars for the
tramways of England and coal for German factories will at
once come to mind as instances of this sort, while wherever
the conditions of distance are at all comparable American man-
ufacturers are crushing their European competitors as easily
as they once crushed the little firms of their native land.
THE SEAT OF CONFLICT.
As was previously stated, the focus of the world market has
shifted from Europe to th^ far Orient, and there can be no
full understanding of the mighty movement called world poli-
tics without some knowledge of the stage on which it is set.
And what a mighty stage it is, with a setting well worthy of
the great actors that are to appear. The old "world politics"
centered around the Mediterranean, a mere inland sea; those
of to-day encircle the mightiest of oceans. It is character-
istic of the change that has taken place that the new forces
are capable of acting across its mighty reaches with even
greater ease and rapidity than the forces of a few generations
ago operated on this almost infinitely smaller field. Says Dr.
Strong in his recent work on Expansion : "Since time became
the measure of distance the Pacific has shrunk until now it is
only one-half as large as the Mediterranean was in the days of
classic Greece. For a twenty-one knot vessel can steam 10,000
miles from Cape Horn to Yokohama in twenty days, which is
tme-half the time it took the old Greek merchant or pirate
vessel to sail 2,000 miles from the Phenician coast to the pillars
of Hercules."
It must also be remembered that the Grecian vessel carried
only between fifty and one hundred tons of cargo, and even
to-day the Mediterranean freighters have, on the average, only
increased this to five hundred or a thousand tons, while James
Hill is building ships of 20,000 tons capacity to operate in con-
nection with the Great Northern railway in the Oriental trade.
The focus of all these movements to-day is China, who by
virtue of that fact becomes of paramount interest in any study
of world relations. Here not only do the various capitalist
societies meet in their last and most desperate struggle, but
capitalism is itself confronted by its mightiest problem in the
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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD POLITICS 450
iorm of the most ancient and fixed society this earth has ever
known, with the largest and most homogeneous population ever
gathered in one social unit. Nor is the land itself less remark-
able than the people. Concerning its natural resources a recent
writer says: "The mining district of Shansee extending in a
southerly direction is 230 miles in length by 30 miles in width.
According to the German geologist, von Richthofen, it is the
richest mining region in the world, being able to furnish coal
and iron for the world's manufactures, at the present rate of
consumption, for 2,000 years."* With a total area one-third
larger than the United States, there are, notwithstanding it
contains one-fourth the inhabitants of the globe, whole prov-
inces as sparsely settled as many of the western states of
America, the lack of land transportation facilities having con-
centrated the vast population in a few highly congested cen-
ters on the lines of water communication. In its length of
navigable waterways it is equaled only by the United States
and Russia, — having over 10,000 miles of natural water routes,
and hundreds more of artificial ones. Although she has to-day
but a little over three hundred miles of railways, concessions
have been granted and surveys made for ten times as much
more, thus showing that her prime minister, Wen Hsiang, was
right when he said, "China will build railroads when she is
ready, and when she once begins, the work will be done with
a rapidity that will astonish the world."f In this regard it is
not so much what has been as what can and will be done. In
a study of world politics future possibilities are often of more
importance than existing realities, because the history of the
competitive system has shown that once resources are discov-
ered a way will be found to exploit them.
Not only are Chinese resources well-nigh boundless but the
cheapness of her labor is proverbial. Wages are estimated
by different authorities to vary from three to fifteen cents a
day, and all agree that this labor is much more efficient than
that of the Japanese, who have accomplished marvelous and
rapid results. Accustomed through long centuries to incessant
unthinking labor, he is the ideal mechanical worker, who will
-quickly become but a cog in the great, industrial mechanism
•of a modern productive establishment and toil to the limit of
-existence.
Chinese isolation, like that of Russia and America, is now
a thing of the past. Thirty-one treaty ports, some of them
hundreds of miles from the sea, were already open to com-
merce before the present outbreak, and there is no doubt but
what at the close of this war all China will be freely opened
to the influence of capitalism. The Trans-Siberian route is
•Reinschj World Politics, p. 188.
t Holcombe, The Real Chinese Question.
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460 INTERNA TIQNAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
being rushed to completion at a record-breaking rate, and as
we have seen, Russia is also constructing railroad communica-
tions to the interior of China from the west. England is
making a last desperate effort to be "in at the death" in the
struggle for the spoils of the long chase for new fields for
capitalist exploitation that has extended to the very ends of
the earth. She is planning a railroad that will skirt the south-
ern slopes of the Himalayas and utilize the lines in northern
India as links in a chain of communication to connect China
with English possessions in Egypt, and ultimately through
the Cape to Cairo railroad with the territory she hopes to gain
by her present piratical conflict in South Africa. But this
route will be manifestly clumsy and expensive and inefficient in
competing power in comparison with the other routes.
The great highway to China, however, and the one over which
the burden of traffic will rest the heaviest in the new world
life is the mighty Pacific, some of whose characteristics have
already been noticed. This differs from all the other great
bodies of water which have been famous as the bearers of
commerce in the innumerable islands with which it is thickly
studded. These vary in size from inhospitable rocks just rising
above the crest of the wave, to great stretches of land sufficient
for an empire. They afford countless stopping places, shel-
tered harbors, coaling stations, landing spots for submarine
cables, and in general will serve to form a multitude of focii,
from which the various arms of commercial communication
will radiate.
The group of islands that now make up the newly formed
Australian federation are without doubt destined to play a con-
siderable part in future world politics. Nevertheless, although
they are probably of more significance than many a so-called
"world-power" of Europe, their natural characteristics and
resources are such that at this time it scarcely appears likely
that they will be able to act more than a minor part in com-
parison with other lands concerned.
A FEW CONCLUSIONS.
What now will be the resultant of these great contending
forces ? What will be the future evolution of America, Russia
and China, and future relation of the forces these names repre-
sent to social development? Many have worded this question
differently, and would make it read "What will the capitalist
nations do with China ?" and generally answer it by saying that
they will ultimately divide it up and wipe it from the map. They
do not seem to see that this answer, even if true, is essentially
superficial. Changes in the atlas and forms of government
are of fundamental importance only to the geographer or dip-
lomat; to the social student they are of very secondary im-
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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD POLITICS 401
portance. For the purpose of this discussion it makes little
difference what is done to the political organization of China,
or as to whether the United States, Russia or an alliance of
western European powers should conquer in the great military
conflict which seems imminent. However boundary lines may
shift and dynasties change, the great social forces we have been
considering will be but little affected. Whatever may happen
to the Chinese nation, the Chinese people will remain ; the min-
eral and agricultural resources still continue to exist, and the
great routes of travel and commerce will be unchanged. This
is especially true under capitalism, which has spread its dread
uniformity of exploitation and wage-slavery over so great a
part of the globe. For capitalism, while extremely patriotic
when in need of soldiers or of votes, knows no nation or coun-
try when profits are at stake.
Knowing the all-penetrating character of capitalism, it is
absolutely certain that China will be thrown open for the great-
est possible exploitation. Her cheap labor will soon be ap-
plied to her marvelous resources for the benefit of a small
class of owners. This will, for years to come, make an outlet
for the surplus capital that American laborers are piling up
in the hands of their capitalist masters. This will incidentally
remove one cause which some less clear-sighted socialist writers
have been looking forward to as a means of precipitating an
economic and social crisis. There will be no breaking down
of American industrial machinery because of a plethora of
capital, at least not within any measurable time. There are
opportunities in yet undeveloped portions of the earth to ab-
sorb the surplus capital of America, as enormous as it appears,
for a generation to come. This fact, taken in connection with
the domination of the world-market, would seem to make it
probable that subsistence could be given to the larger por-
tion of the American proletariat, by their capitalist masters,
in return for enormous profits, for some years to come. To
be sure when we consider this question upon its international
basis, which is the only proper basis, it is seen that as ever
capitalism is the only social system yet existing that is not
able to feed, clothe and house its own slaves. But the bulk of
the suffering seems liable to take place in other lands rather
than here. Not that there will not be tens of thousands of
hungry, naked, homeless members of the producing class in
every great American center of population, for competitive
"prosperity" is a greater hell than the adversity of any intelli-
gent social organization.
In the struggle for the markets of the world, there can be no
question as to who will win in the immediate present. No
other nation can compete with the concentrated organized
industry and cheap, servile but intelligent and skillful American
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462 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
labor. Whether American capitalists will finally shift the seat
of their production to the Orient, as the only place on earth
with cheaper labor than at home, and whether having done so-
they will crush out the industries of the United States, is a ques-
tion whose answer involves too many unknown factors to be
entered upon here.
A NEW WORLD POWER.
So far these questions have been discussed, at one funda-
mental point at least, upon essentially the same base as they
are discussed by the orthodox writers of capitalism. It has
been taken for granted that the present social organization,
with competition, class rule and private property in the essen-
tials of life, is to continue indefinitely. Nothing has been said
to indicate that the great producing masses of the world would
not continue forever to be the mere fighting, toiling slaves of
a ruling capitalist class. It has been taken for granted that
governments, armies and nations would always remain mere
instruments in the hands of this ruling, exploiting class with
which to add to their profits.
But the last few years have witnessed the rise of a new
"world-power" far greater in magnitude and strength than any
hitherto existing. International socialism is the legitimate child
and natural heir of international capitalism and there are many
reasons for believing that it is soon to enter upon its inher-
itance. There are countless signs in every land that the labor-
ers of the world are beginning to do their own thinking. This
stupendous fact, which has been utterly ignored in all current
discussion of international relations and world politics, is des-
tined to overthrow many an elaborately worked out scheme of
social and political prophets. The "balance of power" in world
politics is again shifting and now lies once more outside the
realm of what are ordinarily considered the contending forces.
If soldiers and laborers dare to think, what becomes of kings
and capitalists ? Already a government commission reports that
the Belgian army can no longer be depended upon save to repel
foreign invaders, which means that the "men behind the guns"
have grown too intelligent to shoot their brother laborers
for the benefit of exploiting capitalists. It is notorious that
Kaiser Wilhelm's magnificent military machine is also becom-
ing too intelligent to any longer be a mere blind force in the
hand of a master.
The Russian Cossack and the American volunteer stand
almost alone in the modern world as examples of blind slaves
of militarism. The Cossack has at least this excuse, — that he
is obeying the brute force of a government in whose manage-
ment he has no voice, and whose strength he is powerless to
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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD POLITICS 46a
resist, and besides he has been shut out from all opportunity
of education.
But America is to-day filled with signs of the growth of this
new all-conquering, international world-power. Space does not
permit to give the reasons for believing that here will soon be
its greatest stronghold. Suffice to say, that just as American
society swept on to the highest point of capitalism in less time
than many a nation has required to gain the first stage, so there
is every reason to believe that the coming of socialism will be
equally swift. With the domination of this new world-power
a new social era will be entered upon where world politics will
no longer be a struggle for mastery and extermination, but
for mutual assistance and co-operation between the nations of
the earth.
A. M. Simons,
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The Negro Problem
O many the negro problem was forever solved when
the shackles were struck from the four millions of
the colored race. This act was thought to fulfill
the theory embodied in the Declaration of Indepen-
dence, — that all men were created free and equal. The eman-
cipation of the negro from chattel slavery — an act necessary
to modern capitalist industry — was, from the standpoint of
economic progress, a great step in advance, but instead of solv-
ing the negro problem it merely changed its aspect. The
negro was emancipated from chattel slavery, only to be plunged
into wage slavery. This change merely altered the relation in
which the negro stood to his master.
The ultimate cause that led to the Northern revolt against
the chattel system was its unprofitableness. As soon as in-
dustry passed from the individual and manufacturing period into
modern mechanical industry, it became unprofitable to own
workers as chattels. The change at the North caused New
England morality to revolt against the chattel system and in-
augurate in its place wage slavery. The new order was exceed-
ingly profitable to the capitalist class and enabled the Northern
masters, when the crisis came, to conquer the South and force
it to accept capitalism and the wage system. The rapid inva-
sion of the South by capitalism after the civil war, — the indus-
trial revolution which supplanted the crude tools by mighty
machines, — completely overturned previous relations and gave
rise to a new negro problem which was none other than the
modern problem of labor.
At first the Southern masters looked upon the loss of their
slaves as a severe blow, but they soon began to see, what the
North had long since known, that the ownership of land and
capital meant the virtual ownership of those who must have
access to those instruments or starve. The negro had been
freed, but as this freedom did not include freedom of access
to the means of livelihood he was still as dependent as ever.
Being unable to employ himself he was compelled to seek em-
ployment, or the use of land upon which to live, at the hands
of the very class from whom he had been liberated. In either
case he was only able to retain barely enough of the product
to keep body and soul together. The competition among the
newly-emancipated for an opportunity to secure a livelihood
was so great that their labor could be bought for a mere exist-
ence wage. The negro labor had become a commodity, and
464
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THE NEGRO PROBLEM 4*0
like all commodities its price was determined by its cost of
production. The cost of producing labor-power is the cost of
the laborer's keep. The master class were able to secure the
necessary labor-power to carry on their industries for merely
a subsistence wage — for no more than it cost them when they
owned the negroes as chattels.
The wage slave spends his own subsistence wage, which,
under the chattel system, the owner was obliged to spend for
him. The chattel method was fully as desirable for the slave,
for the owner, having a stake in the life and health of his slave,
desired to keep him in good condition. The wage slave-owner,
however, does not particularly care whether his wage slave lives
or dies, for he has no money invested in him and there zxt
thusands of others to take his place. Surely wage slavery
is an improvement upon the old method of property in human
beings. It saves the useless expense of owning workers a&
chattels, which necessitates caring for them and involves loss
in case of death. The results of slavery are secured by simply
owning the means of production. The new system, with its
revolution of industry, gives to the masters, without expense,
an industrial reserve army who can only secure employment
through their grace. This secures to the master class cheap
labor, for laborers, both white and black, having nothing but
their labor-power to sell and thus being unable to employ
themselves, must compete with each other for an opportunity
to earn a livelihood.
In the days of chattel slavery capitalist production on a large
scale was impossible, because it was unprofitable for the master
to keep more slaves than he could profitably use all the time.
He could not afford a reserve army, for he must feed and care
for his workers whether he could use them or not. This diffi-
culty is overcome by the wage system. The conditions and
even the name of slavery have changed, but the fact remains
untouched. Indeed, slavery is not yet abolished. So long as
the laborer is deprived of property in the instruments of pro-
duction, so long as his labor-power is a commodity which he
is obliged to sell to another, he is not a free being, be he white
or black. He is simply a slave to a master and from morning
until night is as much a bondsman as any negro ever was below
Mason and Dixon's line before the war. Slaves are cheaper
now and do more work than at any time in the world's history.
The same principle of subjection that ruled in the chattel sys-
tem rules in the wage system.
Let us inquire here, of what does slavery consist ? It consists
in the compulsory using of men for the benefit of the user.
One who is forced to yield to another a part of the product of
his toil is a slave, no matter where he resides or what may be
# the color of his skin. This was the condition of the negro
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<W6 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
before the war and it is his condition to-day, and not only his
condition but the condition of all propertyless workers. That
the workman can to-day change his master does not alter the
fact. The negro was a slave, not because of a certain master,
but because he must yield a part of the wealth he produced to
a master. To-day he may desert one master, but he must look
up another or starve, and this necessity constitutes his con-
tinued slavery. Under the old system he was sure of a mas-
ter and consequently his livelihood. One of the greatest curses
of modern slavery is the fear of the slave that he will lose his
position of servitude. Many a negro wage slave, and white as
well, would gladly exchange their freedom to leave their mas-
ter, for a guarantee that their master would not discharge
them.
The loss of the security of existence is the fearful price which
the negro has been obliged to pay for his so-called liberty. The
insecurity of the wage worker is the greatest curse of the pres-
ent system. Closely connected with this is the dependence
which inheres in the wage system. The wage worker is abso-
lutely dependent for his daily bread upon the favor or whim of
his master. Indeed, the wage earner is a wage slave. The
intensity of this slavery depends upon the amount of time which
the workers are compelled to work gratuitously for others.
Under present conditions they must work the greater portion
of their time for some one else. It is thus that the wage-earn-
ing class is a slave to the employing class. Workingmen may
change their master, but they are still at the mercy of the mas-
ter class. The choice of the chattel slave was between work
and the lash ; the choice of a wage slave is between work and
starvation. The whip of hunger is all sufficient to drive the
wage slave to his task.
The worker to-day, then, is a slave, bound by the pressure
of economic wants to compulsory servitude to idle capitalist
masters. He is obliged to sell his liberties in exchange for the
means of subsistence. He is under the greatest tyranny of
which it is possible to conceive, — the tyranny of want. By this
lash men are driven to work long hours and in unwholesome
occupations, and to live in tenement rookeries in our city slums
that for vileness would surpass the slave quarters of old. The
man who has no work or is compelled to submit to wages dic-
tated by a corporation, and is at the beck and call of a master
for ten hours a day, has not much personal liberty to brag of
over his prototype — the chattel slave. A man thus conditioned
is far from free. John Stuart Mill said that "the majority of
laborers have as little choice of occupation or freedom of loco-
motion, are practically as dependent on fixed rules and on the
will of others, as they could be in any system short of actual
slavery." This is the condition into which the negro was "lib-
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THE NEGRO PROBLEM 467
crated." It is quite evident that he has not yet secured any-
thing worthy to be called freedom — he is still in need of eman-
cipation.
The changed conditions which transformed the negro into a
wage slave, identifies the negro problem with the labor prob-
lem as a whole, the solution of which is the abolition of wage
slavery and the emancipation of both black and white from the
servitude to capitalist masters. This can only be accomplished
by collective ownership of the means of production and distri-
bution. Socialism is the only remedy, — it is the only escape
from personal or class rule. It would put an end to economic
despotism and establish popular self-government in the indus-
trial realm. Economic democracy is a corollary of political
democracy. We want every person engaged in industry,
whether male or female, white or black, to have a voice in mak-
ing the rules under which they must work. Under socialism
the workers would elect their own directors, regulate their
hours of work and determine the conditions under which pro-
duction would be carried on. We may be sure that when this
power is vested in the producing class, the factories will be
arranged according to convenience and beauty, and all disa-
greeable smells, vapor, smoke, etc., eliminated, the buildings
well lighted, heated and ventilated, and every precaution taken
against accidents. In other words, under socialism the labor-
ers would have absolute freedom in the economic sphere in
place of the present absolute servitude. Socialists emphasize
the need of this economic freedom, for it is the basis of all free-
dom. Intellectual and moral freedom is practically nullified to-
day through the absence of economic liberty.
Not only would socialism secure to the laborers greater lib-
erty within the economic sphere, but what would be of more
importance is the liberty that the regime would secure to all
outside this realm. The real restrictions to-day are economic.
We are prevented from doing the things we would like to do,
not by governmental restrictions, but by limited means. I
would like to take a trip abroad. No statute prohibits me, but
I am restricted by the lack of the needed resources. Socialism
would increase resources by securing to all steady employment
and the full product of their toil. To-day labor is exploited
out of fully 80 per cent of the wealth it brings into being.
Socialism will abolish this exploitation.
But it is not only freedom of labor but freedom from labor
that socialists seek. With a scientific organization of industry,
eliminating all the wastes of the present system, two or three
hours a day would suffice to supply all the comforts and even
luxuries of life. This would secure to the laborer the leisure
necessary to enable him to develop his faculties and which could
be devoted to recreation and travel.
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468 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
Socialism, then, would secure to the laborers the utmost free-
dom both within and without the economic sphere. It would
enable men to live as men and would secure to each, regardless
of his nationality, the best opportunity for free development
andr movement. There can be no liberty in economic depend-
ence. The man who is in want or in the fear of want is not
a free man. No man is free if he does not possess the means
of livelihood. As long as he must look to the pleasure or profit
of another for his living he is not independent, and without in-
dependence there can be no freedom. Freedom will become
the heritage of all as soon as socialism is realized, because it
will guarantee to all security, independence and prosperity by
securing labor to all and recompensing each according to per-
formance. Socialism contains the only hope for either black
or white. True liberty and freedom can only be attained in
the co-operative commonwealth.
But it may be said that although socialism would emancipate
the negro from economic servitude, it would not completely
solve the negro problem unless its advent would destroy race
prejudices. This is precisely what socialism would do. Of
course, it would not accomplish it all at once, but race preju-
dices cannot exist with true enlightenment. Socialism would
educate and enlighten the race. It would secure to the labor-
ers, whether black or white, the full opportunities for the educa-
tion of their children. Socialism would not only demand that
all children be educated, but it would make compulsory educa-
tion effective by removing the incentive to deprive children of
instruction. To-day thousands of children, white and black,
are robbed of the bright days of childhood simply because em-
ployers can make money out of them. The income of the
parents being insufficient to keep them in school, they are with-
drawn from the school and sent to the factory. It does but
little good to pass laws prohibiting child labor so long as it is
beneficial to both parents and capitalists; they will conspire
in some way to evade the law. The lack of learning, then, is
not the fault of our schools but of our economic system which
deprives the poor of the opportunity of utilizing them. Social-
ism would secure to all children this opportunity by giving to
the head of the family sufficient income so that his children
would not be obliged to become bread-winners. Socialism
would not only secure to the child an education but it would
secure to the adult ample leisure for the cultivation of those
tastes which his training has awakened. These blessings would
not be confined to the white race ; socialism recognizes no class
nor race distinction. It draws no line of exclusion. Under
socialism the negro will enjoy, equally with the whites, the
advantages and opportunities for culture and refinement. In
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THE NEGRO PROBLEM 469
this higher education we may be sure race prejudices will be
obliterated.
Not only will universal enlightenment destroy this low preju-
dice but abolition of competition will aid in working the same
result. The struggle between the black and white to sell them-
selves in the auction of the new slave market has, in many
quarters, engendered bitter race feeling, and that they might
bid the fiercer against each other the masters have fanned this
prejudice into hate. In other sections, as in the coal mines
and railroad camps, the blacks have been used by the masters
as a club to beat down striking whites. This antagonism will
cease under socialism, and with it the hatred which springs
from all class conflicts. It will even disappear under the present
system just in proportion as workingmen recognize the soli-
darity of human labor. Socialism emphasizes the fact that the
interests of all laborers are identical regardless of race or sex.
In this common class interest race distinctions are forgotten.
If this is true of socialists to-day, how much more will it be true
when humanity is lifted to the higher plane where the economic
interests of all are identical.
Socialism, then, is the only solution of the negro problem.
It offers to this much-wronged race the joys and privileges of
an emancipated humanity. It proposes to make him joint own-
er with his white neighbor in the nation's capital, and to secure
him equal opportunity for the attainment of wealth and pro-
gress. Socialism will secure to him the enjoyment of the in-
alienable rights of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. To-day, in common with all wage slaves, he is de-
prived, by an economic system of inequality, of the privilege
of exercising such rights. In the new economic environment
where the negro will enjoy equality of opportunity, he will take
on a new development.
The only hope for the colored race is in socialism, that sys-
tem of society that gives to every individual, without regard
to race, color or sex, an equal opportunity to develop the best
within him. In such a society an individual's social position
will be determined by the use he makes of his opportunities —
by what he becomes.
Socialism, then, is the only hope for the negro and for human-
ity. To realize this ideal is the mission of the working class.
Modern production is wiping out all distinctions of race and
color and dividing society into two classes — the laborers and
the capitalists. The interests of these two classes are diamet-
rically opposed, and the time has come for the black and the
white to join hands at the ballot box against the common ene-
my— -capitalism.
The.Socialist party is the only political organization that has
anything to offer the colored race. The Republican and Dem-
r
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470 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
ocrat parties are both parties of capitalism and could not help
the negro if they would and would not if they could. There is
absolutely no choice between these two parties so far as the
rights of labor are concerned. They both represent the inter-
ests of the capitalist class and their sham battles are for the
purpose of dividing the laborers into various factions lest they
unite to secure their freedom.
The experience of the negro since the civil war has proven
that the colored race will never secure equal opportunities so
long as the present system exists. They were given the ballot
by the Republican party, because that party wished to use them
as a tool against the Democrats. The white laborer was orig-
inally endowed with the franchise for precisely the same mo-
tives. When the mercantile class wished to wipe out the last
thread of landed aristocracy they gave the ballot to the workers
and used them as a weapon to accomplish that end. The labor-
ers have been continually deceived and intimidated into doing
the master's bidding ever since. The negro, perhaps, has been
the most deceived of any branch of the working class. He has
been taught that he is the special ward of the Republican party,
and he has turned in the midst of the barbaric outrages com-
mitted by Southern fanatics and asked his supposed friends for
help, but his appeals have fallen on deaf ears. The recent dis-
franchisement of the negro in the South is but an indication of
what capitalists will soon try to do with all the workers regard-
less of color and regardless of location. The conditions of
forty or fifty years ago have changed. The capitalist class of
the North and the South have now joined hands as the owners
of wage slaves, and while the Democrat party represents the
interests of the small capitalist and the Republican party the
interests of the large capitalist, the interests of both are op-
posed to the laborer.
May the negro wage slave become awakened to his own in-
terests, the interests of the class of which he is a member, and
cast his ballot for the only party that stands for human eman-
cipation — the Socialist party. When socialism supplants cap-
italism the negro problem will be forever solved.
Charles H. Vail.
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The Anthracite Coal Strike
NY history of the great anthracite coal strike would
of necessity include a philosophical inquiry into the
evolution of industry in general; a study of ethics;
an exposition of man's laws and religious creeds, and
a detailed examination of our political and business institu-
tions and a multitude of minor details of geography, topogra-
phy, geology, chemistry, electricity, mathematics, surveying
and transportation by wagon, railroads, steamships, sailing
ships and canal boats.
The energy of preparatory ages is stored in the vast beds of
coal and an almost equal amount of human energy has been
expended in studying all the foregoing subjects and applying
their results to convert stored and latent energy into the active
forces that are urging mankind on to the highest state of human
perfection.
Light, heat, life and power are now dependent upon the
production and distribution of coal but little less than on the
production and distribution of food, clothing and shelter, with-
out which men might still be sitting naked and chilled in mental
and spiritual darkness.
A coal strike, therefore, comes nearer being a slipping of
foundations than any casual observation would discover, and it
may easily be imagined without any "baseless fabric for the
vision" that some day when capital has made its last great cen-
tral organization it will be met by the compact forces of organ-
ized labor, and out of that tremendous last struggle will come
emancipation for the capitalist and the workman, for "where
there is one slave there are always two," and coal lands, one
of the great sources of productive wealth and enlarged happi-
ness, will pass from private ownership to public ownership and
displace the present slow processes of confiscation of accumu-
lated values and daily privations for the vast army of men who
daily go into the bowels of the earth, exposed to unknown and
unavoidable dangers to produce what is fundamentally neces-
sary to human progress. To briefly view the anthracite coal
strike as something more than an industrial bubble to be burst
by the breath of a political dictator, — something more than a
mere evidence of capitalistic greed on the part of the mine-
owners — something more than an indication of organized
tyranny on the part of the miners — is the task of patience en-
larged by some personal contact with miners and children m
the mines and owners in their homes and offices.
471
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
472 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST RBVIBW
It is too common to say of these miners, struggling for bet-
ter conditions, that "they are a rabble," "a ragged crew," "the
scum of the people," a "gang of wretches well worthy of their
condition," "deluded by agitators and walking delegates" —
"ignorant, disorderly, improvident and intemperate," as if their
poverty were their fault, as if their ignorance were not the fault
of their betters.
It is also quite too common to hear the most abusive denun-
ciations of capitalists and to see fingers of scorn pointed at
their seeming greed and cold indifference while a full knowl-
edge would require pity for both and not angry condemnation
of either man or master. That there are capitalists whose
hearts seem to have the functions of a liver secreting bile in-
stead of doing the office of a human heart to send warm, pulsing
blood to move hand and brain to do for and think of others,
is not to be denied. That there are miners and men whose
degradation is of the lowest is not less true, but society pro-
duces both and deserves all she produces and must mother her
own until she so readjusts her system of industry as to evoke
the best that divinely dwells in all hearts, instead of producing
monsters of greed and selfishness in the capitalist class and
atrocious assassins in the proletaire.
The anthracite coal regions of northeastern Pennsylvania
include about 400 square miles of territory and is the only con-
siderable anthracite coal field known in the world. The sur-
face is broken into parallel ridges conformable Vith the geologic
anticlines and synclines. In the latter are contained at depths!
varying from surface exposures of coal to veins more than 1,500
feet below the valley surface, very many almost inexhaustible
veins of coal. The ridges of surface are vast barrens of moor
and rocks, huge as the pyramids, void of vegetation, save brush
and huckleberry bushes. The veins of coal lie from an almost
perpendicular pitch to a nearly flat level and vary in thickness
from three feet to seventy feet. At Lattimer, for miles the
great mammoth vein is workable from the surface and the rapid
explosions of dynamite and the flying rock and coal is one of
the most impressive sights in the world of industry.
Scientific engineering has built railroads along the windings
of the valleys, upon the sides of the mountains, through them
and over them. Huge stationary engines pull vast quantities
of coal in cars, from one plane up to another having some
natural outlet to the world of demand. Canals wind along the
rocky Lehigh to carry the black treasure to the seaboard for
factories, homes and ships that sail all seas over. The great
puffing hoisting engines draw the coal from the lowest veins
with incredible speed, four or five hundred cars a day being
the quite ordinary capacity of an average hoisting shaft. The
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THE ANTHRACITE COAL STRIKE 478
"most wonderful machinery is found in and about the mines. In
the gangways and many parts of the mines are electric lights,
electric motors for hauling coal to the foot of the hoisting
shafts and throughout the mines great volumes of pure fresn
air are constantly blowing, driven by enormous fans running
night and day. All the machinery, all the air, every depart-
ment from surface to the remotest depths is under inspectors
appointed and paid by the state. Men of practical knowledge,
bred and trained in the mines, and I believe from personal
acquaintance with them, men of high character, with humane
feeling for the men whose dangerous avocation they thoroughly,
know. There is everywhere evidence not only of the Creator's
power and beneficence, but also an inspiring exhibition of
divine intelligence on the part of "unknown, unhonored and
unsung" inventors, engineers and mechanics who seem to have
mastered the hard conditions of nature's mountains and rocks
and waters piled over and high above the precious treasures
stored to bless mankind.
It is at once apparent that but for the coal, neither canals,
railroads nor wagons would find traffic of freight or persons,
for the whole region is void of any other value than its stores
of matchless fuel. In the valleys and on the mountains are
villages and cities quite comparable with like places anywhere
in any other sections of this country. Nearly all are connected
not only with steam railroads but with scores of trolley lines
of high power and capacity. There are schools for children
who should be in them and not in or about the mines. There
are churches of all denominations, many of them with only one
redeeming feature, namely, "the redeeming feature," and this
feature is used with full force to exact contributions that have
erected superb edifices easily matching those to be found any-
where else. Saloons, parks and beer gardens flourish almost
as thickly there as in any of our old or new possessions. Banks
paying 50 per cent annual dividends, that boast a par value of
$50 and a market price of $1,200 per share, flourish and fleece
poor and rich alike. All these are not extraordinary accom-
paniments ; they are the ordinary accompaniments of the mod-
ern system of industry almost everywhere.
To the presence of many of these accompaniments may (the
superficial thinker might say) be ascribed much of the poverty,
intemperance and degradation of the miners and laborers who
undertake indescribable dangers, perhaps with little conscious
thought of the purpose of their toil and bravery, but in reality
nevertheless for the betterment of the race. The laws of the
land give full legal right to individuals, partners and corpora-
tions, railroads excepted, to acquire by purchase or inher-
itance, a fee simple title to the coal lands to the center of the
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/"
474 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
earth and perpendicularly to the stars if such possession in
either direction should be necessary to the holding of the treas-
ures between the two points mentioned. It is safe to assert
that such laws did not contemplate the possible ownership by
one man or by one body of men corporated or unincorporated
of all this immense body of land. The laws of the state of
Pennsylvania do not permit railroad companies to own and
operate coal lands, and yet there are nine huge, excessively
capitalized railroads directly or indirectly engaged, not merely
as was intended in hauling coal to the markets, but in operating
coal lands and exploiting the people in anarchistic violations of
such laws. So that by methods known and unknown compe-
tition for the carrying of coal has been destroyed because of
this greed for owning the lands, and the small individual oper-
ations, so called, now 28 per cent of the total production, are
doomed in the near future to utter absorption into one, namely,
the nine combined railroads. Sixty per cent of tide water prices
is all that is now allowed to the individual or smaller producing
companies, and all these are forced to play the old children's
game of "thumbs up and up she comes, and now, Simon says,
thumbs down, and down she comes."
Several of the larger railroad companies' lines of the anthra-
cite regions extend into and far beyond the bituminous coal
regions in central and western Pennsylvania and openly carry
bituminous coal to any and all eastern markets at from one-half
to one-third the carrying charges put upon like tonnage of
anthracite coal. Most of the railroads haul and consume
bituminous coal even in their passenger engines. The individ-
ual operators have often, when they were still numerous and
powerful, tried to build railroads to take their production, but
soon their numbers would be again diminished by some long-
headed brother selling out and transferring property, brain
and individuality to the larger combine, and so the individual
operators have been forced again and again to practice newer
and closer economies at the expense of miners and consumers,
and left powerless to advance wages, and in most desirable
ways to make needed improvements or provide essential safe-
guards to protect the men in and about the mines. If he seeks
to recoup himself by increasing the output of his mines, thus
putting the men on fuller time and increased income, he is met
by the "limit of production," as if under proper conditions
there could be a limit to the production except as limited by
the capacity to produce and consume, and thus far he has
blindly agreed annually to limit the output of coal. In fact he
could do nothing else, since the power to fix prices and output
is and has been for years in the hands of the coal carrying
roads. But here it must be seen that the sales of anthracite
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THE ANTHRACITE CdAL STRIKE 47*
coal reach a limit very quickly because of the cheaper carrying
charges given to the larger output of bituminous coal, and as
both coals are mined and carried for money only, the effects of
unfair treatment of either producers or men engaged in the
business can under the system have no sympathetic or any
other consideration. This feature of the impossibility of exer-
cising the better instincts of the human heart and mind is the
most discouraging of all. The managers of such huge indus-
tries where thousands are employed become mere captains of
industry and can seldom see or- know the sufferings of the man
"hard pressed in the ranks."
One thing that strikes the observer from bituminous fields is
the fact that in the anthracite coal fields consumers fill their
cellars with that clean beautiful coal at from $1.25 to $2.75 per
ton as against $2.20 to $3.00 for our dirty, smoking coal here,*
and so the puzzle is not less easy to solve when he sees the
larger cost of producing anthracite coal as against bituminous
or block coal. He sees moreover that as near as sixteen miles
from the mines in the anthracite regions the consumer is
charged the same price for his coal as is charged in New York*
150 miles farther away. He looks with curious sadness upon
the methods of exploitation of labor on the one hand and con-
sumers on the other, and half amusedly when he considers, if
he thinks at all, of the almost wild political enthusiasm of both
these classes, who honestly seem to think that either the gold
standard or the demonetization of silver, or imperialism or
any old demogogicalism that leads to the spoils and emolu-
ments of office is the paramount issue, and whenever a brilliant
speaker tells them of the "march of the flag" they choke with
patriotism and become forgetful of the real things that con-
cern them most. How long ! how long ! will the children follow
the beckoning hands of leaders who laugh while they gently
sift the dustman's sand in their eyes ?
All these railroads to which I have briefly referred were ex-
ceedingly costly, built when material and labor were costly,
built in a country whose topography required the most expen-
sive construction. Their capitalization is greatly disproportion-
ate to their cost. There are vast holdings of lands in fee simple
and on royalties, payable annually whether coal is mined or
not. All these things are a tremendous burden which must,
according to the simplest rules of arithmetic, be charged to pro-
duction account, thus taxing the consumer on the one hand
and labor on the other. There are more roads than are neces-
sary to do the work of transportation, and so this ponderous
weight of cost and capital and water, requiring dividends and
bonds and rapidly compounding interest and taxes, must be
♦Terre Haute, Indiana.
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476 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
saddled somewhere, somewhere ! The burden has but two
places to rest. First, upon the consumer ; but the price to the
consumer has now reached the highest limit, because if this
limit is exceeded, the consumer will use soft coal. So neither
the individual nor the combined railroads can exact, demand or
extort much above the prices that have ruled for the last few
years, since the coal roads reached out, in order to pay, high
salaries, dividends and interest, into the fields of rapidly increas-
ing production of bituminous coal.
Where else could the burden fall? Not, certainly, upon the
Vanderbilts — not upon the Morgans — not upon the Rocke-
fellers. No, indeed; society need not look for sacrifices from
these or any of their co-operators. If they should take less
from the sweat and toil of humanity, how could the castles at
Newport, Asheville and New York be maintained with all their
fortunate ducking and bowing servants? Would any one ex-
pect that the yachts and private railroad palaces and equipages
could be docked or sidetracked, and the church, — what would
the church do without Rockefeller's income and contributions ?
Surely the spiritual body of the blessed Son of Man must be
domiciled. And what would become of Chicago University?
Ah, there is the everlasting obstacle. It must be maintained to
teach the youth of the land the way to become one of God's
trustees, in not only this but in the religious and political insti-
tutions of the country. Surely no one would believe that these
should participate in easing the hard conditions of existence
here so as to have human hearts prepared to believe in a mer-
ciful God and a loving Christ.
Where else then must these burdens rest if not upon the
consumers of wealth — if not upon the exploiters of values?
Logically, certainly, unavoidably, absolutely upon the miners
and men who dig and delve and blast and haul the coal from its
deep and dangerous beds into the sunlight of commerce.
Included with the last class of sufferers, as participating pro-
ducers of coal wealth, are an army of book-keepers, clerks,
stenographers, superintendents, bosses, and lastly, general man-
agers, bowed with the unsolvable problems of keeping profits,
by all manner of economies, up to a dividend point, having to
bear the ever-increasing interest charges, eating the money,
value of the coal far faster than interest and taxes devour
vacant lots in Terre Haute, driven to take a hand in the devilish
windings of politics to prevent the extortions of politicians,
placidly riding on passes and nevertheless seeking to impose
ever harder and harder conditions upon these and other public
corporations in local, county and state legislation, or have a
price for forbearance; obliged to constantly increase their
watchfulness to protect the property from those who wrongly
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THE ANTHRACITE COAL STRIKE 477
but none the less naturally come to feel embittered by the bur-
dens of managerial economies being placed too heavily upon
their galled and wincing shoulders.
High-board fences with barbed wire on top are now consid-
ered a necessary additional expense. Special deputies at high
prices, with detectives at higher prices, are still greater bur-
dens and the state at large, the producer and consumer must,
under the conditions now existing, in the end pay the whole
wasteful expense.
On October I one of the largest coal companies in the re-
gion, — a company boasting a surplus of $6,000,000, a market
value of $520 per share, with annual dividends of 21 per cent, —
removed men of life-long service, men of the highest talents,
of the gentlest character and of approved ability, proved by
having given this company the very values I have quoted. These
men were summarily displaced by new and cheaper men, men
who declare their intentions of disposing, p. d. q., and in that
abbreviated symbolism fully set forth, of the old fogy kindness
and sentimentalism of the deposed management, guilty of no
offense save being humane and sympathetic with their men and
of being unwilling and unable to go farther in unjust exactions
to maintain under constantly increasing difficulties such exces-
sive dividends. The fact, without doubt, will soon be admitted
that this great company, hitherto independent and loyally stand-
ing with the few remaining independent or smaller producers
in their everlasting fight for freight concessions, more cars,
and being now engaged in building a new railroad to tide-
water, has passed into the hands of the Vanderbilt-Morgan
and Standard people, and what has been accomplished in the
oil business, the sugar business, the gas business, the street
car business, the meat business and many other prime sources
of employment for brains and muscle will have been done in
the anthracite coal business.* Then the larger task, already
under way, the completion of the destruction of competition
in the bituminous fields, will the sooner and easier be accom-
plished.
All the minor grievances of excessive charges for powder
bought in the open market at from 90 cents to $1.50 per keg,
and charged to the miner at $2.75 ; the long ton, 2,240 pounds
required and 3,360 pounds insisted upon, the consumer getting,
of course, a short ton — very, very short, often less and never an
ounce more than 2,000 pounds; the dockage at the surface;
company stores, company houses, company doctors — all these
minor grievances seem unfair, foully unfair, to the public be-
cause they do not understand the reasons for such strange
things. All these, whenever they exist, and they do not exist
•According to recent newspaper report, this prediction Is now fulfilled.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
478 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
at all collieries, are unimportant and for any great length of
time impossible to settle or arbitrate or dispense with without
being replaced by diminutions in other ways that would seem
quite as unjust. The whole trouble, the everlasting trouble,
lies with deeper causes, some of which I have indicated in pass-
ing. I say now, fairly, patiently, kindly and with love in my
heart for the men and children who work and for the men who
manage that vast industry, the causes of your differences and
hardships are beyond your brains and hearts to permanently
adjust. Instead of opposing each other you should join hands
and strike -together against the forces that are blindly dividing
you, and some day such a strike will come. It will, sooner or
later, be impossible for one family, or two or three joined in a
corporate wedlock as the Vanderbilts, Morgans and Rockefel-
lers now are, to order and control managers, superintendents
and men and exploit on the stage of life eighty millions of peo-
ple, for the people will be forced ere long to know what the
paramount issue of life really is. Then these pathetic griev-
ances and scenes that are now pounding the hearts of unnum-
bered men, women and children who work, and of mine owners
who justly believe themselves to be fair-minded men, will be-
come impossible. It is moreover certain that not a man in the
Vanderbilt family or in the Morgan family or in the Rockefeller
family ever saw a coal mine. Not one of them, male or female,
old or young, Democrat or Republican, Methodist or Baptist,
ever heard the awful, terrifying roar of exploding gases in those
dark depths, ever even thought of the horrors of being en-
tombed and hopeless of rescue, or ever wondered how strangely
unfair and illogical the system is that rewards the doer of the
meanest and most dangerous work with the smallest pay. They
do not know how black God's beautiful earth must seem to a
man or a child crushed by falling rock, having, alas ! too often
and unfortunately enough life left in his poor maimed body to
live and in this supposedly Christian land and know that society
would pension him had he gone from father, mother, wife and
home to plunge bayonets into quivering human bodies to ex-
tend the commerce of his employers and to continue the "march
of the flag" to lands where nuggets of gold may be had for the
products of his toil. He knows, alas ! too well, the little value of
a human life in the grinding necessities of an industrial system
that has dollars, not human happiness, for its object. How
much love and human kindness can remain in the hearts of a
generation that are learning to know that a "mule dead" is a
loss of $100 or $150, while a "man dead" requires only another
to fill his place. It is a dreadful thing, more pregnant with
awful meaning than any one can guess. When one goes down
in the earth with men and boys and mules and realizes, per-
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THE ANTHRACITE COAL STRIKE 479
haps for the first time, that a mule is worth all that it costs,
and that a man — ! Ah, how quickly every tool is dropped,
whether from the hands of the Hun, the Italian, the Welshman
or the Irishman, — no thought on their part of a lost hour or
day; how tenderly and with such tears as even a Mary would
hasten to dry with the hairs of her head, — when some comrade
falls or is crushed and must be borne to the ones who live in
constant fear and expectation of such common sorrows, do all
these blackened children of toil and ignorance fly to help the
unfortunate brother. The calm serenity of a Vanderbilt, a
Morgan, or a Rockefeller can never be disturbed, because they
have never felt the blessed happiness of being in sympathy with
the weak and lowly children who toil that they may live and
spin not, and be clothed like God's lilies and then piously
accuse God of having entrusted them with money to farther and
farther exploit God's children. What could one believe or say
of such judgment on the part of God if the blasphemous accu-
sation could be known to be true? These men are more to
be pitied than condemned, and we should "judge not as the
Judge judges, but as the sunlight falling around a helpless
thing."
This side of any radical change in our social system many
necessary reforms are possible, but not likely to be adopted.
The hungry might be made a little more contented than they
have of late years been with their privations. A moderate, even
a very slight reform, in the conduct of the great railroads might
greatly tend to something like a tranquil basis, but driven as
they are by the conditions observed, there seems no stopping
place except through suffering of all the classes.
The true test of the value of all institutions, whether business,
religious or political, is their utility and conformity to justice,
reason and the establishment of happiness here on earth.
Ignorance and prejudice stand strongly in the way of reforma-
tion. The timid are prevented from approaching its consider-
ation by the cry of theory, theory idealism, dreaming, impos-
sible of accomplishment by reason of the badness of human
nature, and so they cling to some old superstition and placidly
fold their arms and appeal to the law of the survival of the
fittest, and all the while are forced to see that it means only
the survival of the slickest. . They decry innovation as an en-
croachment upon individual liberty, lift their inquiring voices to
ask what will become of incentive and hear the echoes answer,
"What will become of incentive ?" But the echo adds the wiser
query, what opportunity will remain for incentive ? when nearly
all men are forced to acknowledge a master now, so that preach-
ers dare not preach, teachers dare not teach and business men
feel the fear of business losses if they speak their soul's thought
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480 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
in condemnation of the noisome nastiness that our present
social system is breeding faster than all the reformers of what-
ever ilk or name can influence or hinder. In such circum-
stances it is answer enough to such, that the principles of free-
dom are really the most ancient and longest established and
were first contemporaneous, with joint interest in the results of
human toil. That tyranny and corruption, constantly submerg-
ing the morals of our dear people, are but another form of
enslavement that must have abolition, and that those who now
in this and other lands bestir themselves for a more rational
system of promoting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
and the right to work, are aiming only at a restoration of rights
which were once universally acknowledged and of which the
value will be demonstrated not only by the evils that must flow
from our present social order, but by the happiness, glory and
prosperity that will continue to result from a scientific social
order of industry that must soon be almost universally de-
manded.
5*. M. Reynolds.
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The Century of the Workingmen
Address by Prof. Smile Vandervelde at the Maison du Peuple, Brussels,
on the evening of December 31, 1900.
E celebrate to-night the final establishment of the
new International, the outcome of the whole working-
class movement of the nineteenth century, the start-
ing point of the decisive social struggles which will
mark the century so soon to begin. Symbolizing in the pro-
gram of our festival the essential progress accomplished in
the last hundred years, we began with the Marseillaise, we shall
end with the song of the International.
The Marseillaise is the song of triumph of the third estate,
it is the Revolution, only national as yet ; it is the hymn of re-
publican France defending her free institutions against the
coalition of Europe.
The International is the song of the hopes of the proletariat,
it is the hymn par excellence of the world party which, to quote
the fitting words of the Austrian Social Democrats, "condemns
the privileges of nations like those of birth, of sex, of posses-
sion, and declares that the struggle against exploitation must
be international, as is exploitation itself."
Over the whole surface of the globe, indeed, capitalist exploi-
tation is spreading, wallowing in blood or in mire.
world politics.
The great American trusts hypocritically menace the inde-
pendence of Cuba. Two hundred thousand soldiers, the pas-
sive instruments of an aristocracy of financiers, are trampling
under their feet the South African republics. And while the
wounds of Armenia still bleed, with no intervention from Eu-
rope, the capitalist governments are calling truce to their com-
mercial antagonisms to hurl themselves upon China — worse
mongols than the Mongols themselves, — answering massacre
by massacre, pillage by pillage.
But these atrocities, no matter how just the horror they in-
spire, should not blind us to certain significant phases of the
transformation which has been working under our eyes for
twenty-five years, though it be through fire and sword, it is the
conquest of the world which is being accomplished, it is world
politics which is taking the place of national politics.
The United States have now entered into the concert of
481
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482 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
powers. The six English colonies of Australia are forming
themselves into an autonomous republic. The partition of
Africa is completed. The iron bands of the Trans-Siberian
railway already traverse the whole of Asia; everywhere cap-
italism penetrates, bringing exploitation and war, but every-
where socialism also is not slow to follow, promising freedom
and peace.
Japan had scarcely introduced the parliamentary forms of
Europe before a socialist journal, which reaches us regularly
every fortnight, was started at Tokio. Moreover, a glance at
the bulletin of the department of labor at Washington will con-
vince any one that under the pressure of unions and strikes,
wages have tripled in Japanese industry since the introduction
of the factory system. So without despising the dangers and
the crises that may take their rise from the internationalization
of the market, we may fairly believe that the addition of the
yellow workmen, joining their low wages to their inferior pro-
ducing power, will never have more than transient effects on
the standard of life of the white workmen. On the other hand,
those who in view of the triumphs of brute force, the aggrava-
tions of military despotism and the disgraces of colonial poli-
tics might be inclined to pessimism and discouragement, need
only look back to the first days, infinitely more somber, of the
century now drawing to a close, and in a comparison of the
two epochs they will gain renewed confidence.
THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
It was on the morrow of the Eighteenth Brumaire. The
French republic had accomplished the death of Gracchus Ba-
boeuf, and his friends of the conspiracy of the "equals," guil-
lotined in 1796, seemed to have carried with them their yet
unchristian child, socialism, into the common grave of revolu-
tionary ideas. The bourgeoise, tearing up the Declaration of
Rights, contented itself with the civil code. Universal suffrage,
which gave birth to the convention, had been abolished since
the first Vendemaire of the fourth year of the republic. In Eng-
land, the members from rotten boroughs were diminishing in
the House of Commons. Absolutism held undivided sway in
all the other countries. The noise of the cannon of Marengo
drowned the plaints of liberty. And yet, just when the revolu-
tion seemed dead, another revolution, more destructive and
more fruitful than all the revolutions accomplished for eighteen
centuries, was beginning in the depths of the social organism
and was preparing the formation of the most revolutionary
class of all, the industrial proletariat. It is in fact from the
beginning of the nineteenth century, in the midst of the tur-
moil of the wars of the empire, that the reign of the machine
has been established.
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THE CENTURY OF THE WORKWOMEN 488
It is the machine, daughter of industry and commerce, which,
adding prodigiously to the social forces which gave it birth,
goes on to establish the world-market, to occasion the con-
centration of capital, to group the laboring population in cities,
to accentuate the antagonism of the classes, to create modern
socialism.
It is the revolutionary machine, to use Lassalle's striking
phrase, which in quick succession is to transform the cotton
and wool industries, to multiply a hundred fold the product
of the extractive industries from coal to petroleum, to meta-
morphose metal-working by substituting coal for vegetable
combustibles, to revolutionize transportation and communica-
tion on land and sea by the locomotive, the steamship and the
electric telegraph, and finally to develop a new agriculture by
throwing upon the markets of Europe the meats and cereals of
the whole world.
Here is a transformation without parallel in history, and
belonging almost wholly within the limits of this century. The
spinning machines and looms do indeed appear during the last
third of the preceding century, but they do not spread on the
continent till after the restoration (1815). The steam engine,
applied first to coal mining, then to all forms of manufactur-
ing industry, dates from 1790. It was in 1819 that the "Savan-
nah," the first steamer making regular trips between the
United States and Europe, entered the port of Liverpool; in
1830 the railway between Liverpool and Manchester was
opened ; in 1838 Morse announced from New York to the Acad-
emy of Sciences his invention of the electric telegraph ; in 1840,
at the instance of Rowland Hill, penny postage was extended
over all England ; and each of these innovations or inventions,
spreading with increasing rapidity, brought on countless rev-
olutions in all fields of social and political life.
THE GENESIS OP SOCIALISM.
The postal reform, coinciding with the general introduction
of the rotary press, created the cheap newspapers. The for-
midable network of railroads, of trans-Atlantic navigation lines,
of postal communications, of telegraphs, land and sub-marine,
brings individuals and nations together, annihilates local pecu-
liarities, and contributes powerfully toward developing a univer-
sal conscience. Large-scale manufacturing, at first English,
later European, pursues its triumphal march across the world,
crushing under its steps the primitive forms of production,
and grouping in its factories a proletariat ever growing in num-
bers. Colossal fortunes are built up, monstrous miseries are
unveiled. Socialism leaps forth at once from the pity of some
and the suffering of others. Owen, Fourier, St. Simon and the
brilliant throng of their disciples preach the new gospel. The
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484 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
Lyonnaise in 1832 raised the banner of revolt. The Chartist
movement grows. All Europe trembles. Finally, at the very
hour when the revolution of 1848 groups the bourgeoise and
the working class together for the last time, in a common rev-
olutionary movement, Engels and Marx sum up and co-ordi-
nate in the Communist manifesto the socialist thought of the
first half of the century, affirm the inevitableness of the class
struggle and bring to the toilers the formula of the Interna-
tional, "Workingmen of all countries, unite."
It is from this moment we may say that the history of social-
ism is linked inextricably with the history of the nineteenth
century. Against it, thenceforth all the privileged classes are
to combine, all governments are to arm themselves.
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST SOCIALISM.
They attack it with exceptional legislation, they take away
from it in Germany and in Austria the universal suffrage that
had been won by force of arms ; they imprison its leaders, they
prohibit its meetings, they drive it to desperate insurrections.
On two occasions, in June, 1848, and in May, 1871, its adver-
saries flattered themselves that they had crushed it. Twice it
was born again, fuller than ever of life and strength, — in the
first International, founded in 1864, and in the new Interna-
tional, proclaimed in 1899, consecrated by the festivals of the
first of May of the following years, and organized definitely on
September 24, 1900. Henceforth we may affirm that it rests
on indestructible foundations, — the national working class par-
ties which exist in all parts of the world, in all countries where
capitalism has penetrated.
Everywhere, in fact, from Russia to New Zealand, the prole-
tariat has organized, publicly or secretly; everywhere, under
different forms, but with the same final end, the Social Democ-
racy is arranging itself against the old-time powers ; it is wrest-
ing from them political rights ; it is imposing upon them social
reforms ; it is constraining popes and emperors to make it con-
cessions in the vain hope of arresting progress.
THE CENTURY OF THE WORKERS.
In all the domains of thought and of action, in the works of
artists as in the writings of poets, in the books of scientists
as in the text of laws, in the millions of newspapers, pamphlets,
publications which the democratized press spreads daily through
all houses and families, the socialist idea is penetrating, filtering
into brains, crystallizing into purposes, conquering minds and
hearts with its sovereign power.
We see it forbidden in all parliaments, preached in all cities
of workingmen, its feasts kept with religious zeal with each re-
curring year, by all the nations of workers. And in this cen-
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THE CENTURY OF THE WORKINGMEN 485
tury, which will appear to future generations, perhaps, as the
greatest ever lived by men, in this century, which might be
called the century of music since it gave us Wagner and
Beethoven, the century of poetry since it saw the death of
Goethe and the birth of Victor Hugo, the century of science
since it was illumined by Darwin, socialism has awakened such
hopes, has opened so magnificent an era, has stirred such
mighty movements in the proletarian mass that the nineteenth
century will remain in history under the name Gladstone gave
it, the century of workers.
Citizens and comrades, in the name of the International
Bureau I extend to all our companions in struggle, all those
who work and suffer for the cause of the revolutionary prole-
tariat, our most fraternal wishes for the year which now begins,
for the century which opens, and which shall be the century
of triumph, —
THE CENTURY OF SOCIALISM.
—(Translated by Charles H. Kerr.)
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The Relation of Instructor and Student
through the halls daily, one cannot but hear:
ed him dead, and yet hadn't looked at the
-Ha, ha, lucky man ! — He won't get to me to-
~„ Jt o V I'll risk going in. — If you hadn't braced me
up I'd been a goner. — Lend me your cribs. — Oh dear, oh dear,
I really can't get this stuff, and I'm deathly afraid of him. — I'll
get square with old — " And coming up the stairs, one must
wind his way amid sighs and spiteful laughter, and through
final paroxysms of x, y, z's and thumbing of logarithms and lex-
icons ere the dreaded knell summons the guilty to the modern
inquisition. The trial endured, there is a rush for the lockers
and escape. But even fresh air and changed surroundings can-
not dispel the incubus of goading duty from the conscientious
and the rankling self-defense of independence. The prevalent
attitude of student and teacher is characteristically shown in
one of our collections of imaginative number forms where only
the weekly holidays and vacation months are bright colored,
while all the college days of the year are dark and dismal. On
these days of supposed culture study many a conscientious stu-
dent, in whom open antagonism has been suppressed by habita-
tion in the mill-stone of duty, despairs with Faust :
"Nur mit Entsetzen wach' ich Morgens auf,
Ich mtichte bittre Thranen weinen,
Den Tag zu sehn, der mir in seinem Lauf
Nlcht Einen Wtinsch, erf Mien wird, nlcht Elnen.
Der selbst die Ahnung jeder Lust
Mit eigensinnigem Krlttel mindert,
Die Schopfung meiner regen Brust
Mit tausend Lebensfratzen hindert.
Auchmuss ich, wenn die Nacht slch niedersenkt.
Mich angstlich auf das Lager strecken;
Auch da wird keine Rast geschenkt,
Mich werden wilde Traume schrecken."
Another picture. A crowd of 150 German students is strug-
gling for places nearest the door of the lecture room. It is an
hour before the lecture time, and in the hot summer vacation,
too. The door being finally unlocked, there is a rush for front
seats; this is repeated daily. The unfortunate upper rows of
the amphitheatre are aided with opera glasses. The instruc-
tor finally enters leisurely, good-naturedly acknowledges the
storm of applause, throws up some human vertebrae to each
couple of students, takes up a spinal column, and without more
introduction begins to point out and explain on the real material,
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INSTRUCTOR AND STUDENT 487
the descriptions of human anatomy in the books and cuts. For
two continuous hours daily for four weeks he thus shows with
an invaluable collection of preparations all the main anatomy
of our wonderful bodies. Helpful models, charts, blackboard
drawings and lantern slides add to his demonstration of the real
material- Every eye is on him, with or without opera glasses.
For the cell anatomy, a long row of microscopes are ready with
real preparations and with schematic drawings under each mi-
croscope's foot for guidance. In small groups he repeatedly
demonstrates the visceral organs on the "Leiche." After each
lecture students crowd about him with real questions and for
personal examination of the material, which, together with the
whole anatomical museum, was open all day for their study.
Out of lecture hours he was to be found all day in his labora-
tory, and, though always busy, he ever had leisure for a caller
who really wanted to ask and learn anything. The students
honored him for his knowledge, were grateful to him far be-
yond the large fee they gladly paid, and always felt deeply the
privilege he offered them in thus gaining a most valuable intro-
duction or review to the most important organism on our earth.
As a participant in this group of students, I naturally fell to
comparing these contrasting attitudes of instructor and student.
As undergraduates in college we never clamored for an hour to
get in Trigonometry, Philosophy, Herodotus and Livy. Our
anxiety was to get back seats instead of front ones. The
instructor was always waiting for us, and this attitude of lying-
in-wait seemed 'to be his main occupation and happiness. We
appeared at the last moment, because he called the roll with
military punctuality, not because it would have been our own
most detrimental loss to have missed his hour. No applause
and kindly welcomes were exchanged. His function was to
find out whether we had learned anything alone from the text-
book rather than to demonstrate, explain, and supplement the
matter in the books. To be sure, his bringing in real demon-
stration material was usually out of the question, for it was
either an intangible abstraction or was still in the monasteries.
No helps to the gaining of knowledge were allowed, — his ob-
ject was to make it hard and not easy. We always found fifty
minutes too long instead of a couple of hours too short- If we
lingered after the hour, it was to steal a look at the inquisitor's
judgment book, to raise our mark by feigning questions, or to
receive a penalty. He was never in his class-room except dur-
ing "business hours," and we never knew nor cared what he
did with the rest of his time. It was understood through the
janitor, however, that, aside from getting up his catechism each
evening for the next day, he shaved himself, read French novels,
and sat. Thus we naturally had no respect for his hand-to-
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X
488 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
mouth knowledge and no gratitude for his keeping our nose
down to the grindstone.* Our emancipation day came with
passing our final examination by any means escaping detection ;
while in the other case no examination had been given, — the
instructor's part was to offer valuable knowledge with the best
known methods; how much each student had profited by it
was his own concern and not the instructor's.
An effort to break through this antagonism I can never for-
get. Having been attracted to the character of Spinoza in some
outside reading, I ventured to call on the Professor of Philos-
ophy — though never having been invited by him nor any pro-
fessor to visit them out of class hours — and expressed my inter-
est in Spinoza and desire to know more of him- But after shift-
ing about in his chair the professor said that really his notes
on Spinoza were not at hand, but when he got around to him
again in his course he would be better prepared to talk of him.
So, with apologies for interrupting him, I withdrew and left
him to continue his "book-making," as he expressed it, with
a smile which displayed clearly the commercial motive of his
industry. Walking away, I wondered if his knowledge of Spi-
noza could be more than parrot-deep, or if his interest in him
went beyond his adaptability for making our lives uncomforta-
ble. And later, on finding the inspiring modern companionship
of Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise and the nobility of
his life as shown in his letters, I naturally believed that one who
showed no knowledge of 6x interest in these highest parts of a
subject he taught must be an impostor or my enemy.
What, now, are the reasons for these contrasting attitudes
of teacher and student? First of all, the one taught a subject
which to him personally had been for years of great interest and
worth. Not to the exclusion of other kinds of knowledge, but,
after a considerable and varied trial of other kinds of knowl-
edge, he had been attracted to this as his life field of specializa-
tion. Every year his love for and devotion to his subject in-
creased, though the ever-enlarging bounds of its material and
possibilities seemed to dwarf his progress, and made him more
cautious and modest. Though he gladly gave up part of his
day and year to those who genuinely wanted to try the worth
of his field and took the highest delight in the sympathy and
companionship of the few who finally joined him in this
"Hauptfach," yet he specially looked forward to his own daily
hours of study and to his vacation months for their fullness of
work and their most deep and inspiring happiness.
On the other hand, the students either seriously wanted
* Two honorable exceptions should in justice be mentioned,— two of the highest type
of teachers, and for whom we all had much gratitude then and far more now. But the
uncongenial field for their Taluable subjects was shown in the fact that the one was
forced to leare the college, though bitter opposition could not expel the other.
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INSTRUCTOR AND STUDENT 489
to test the worth of his subject, or, having already found it
valuable, wanted more. They came to him because he could
Ijive them more real knowledge than the books and more than
other teachers of the same subject. Realizing the great ad-
vantages thus offered, with the wealth of helpful material and
experience for gaining the most real knowledge with the least
labor, they concentrated their hours and interest with an en-
thusiasm and glad devotion which was contagious and most in-
spiring.
How did the mercenary task-master regard his subject? Did
he stand at his private office blackboard on Saturday or Mon-
day developing the beauties of the binomial formula and spheri-
cal triangle, or solace his weariness on the car trip home by
fondly taking from his breast pocket his book of logarithms,
or forego church on a peaceful Sunday morning that he might
demonstrate to the children on his knees why they believed one
line was equal to another?
Did the philosopher loafing in his summer hammock feel
his heart thrill with the thought that those very leaves and
"birds and skies above were constructed on the Hegelian dialec-
tic principle of Nothing + Being = Becoming? Did he ever
value his "life work" enough to possess his own Kant,
or did he permanently borrow the library copy ? Are the Greek
teacher's steps made buoyant with gladness for the message
he brings his impatient students as the morning air revives the
scenes and associations of entuthen exelaunei? Perhaps,
though, the Latin teacher is reminded, when winds are high, of
his beloved Cicero, and thus amid the turmoils of life feels the
constant presence of a rhetorical strength. For his lighter
moods he takes up his well-worn Livy, heaving a pharisaical
sigh at the incomparable joy which the original language adds
to those charming ideas.
But, seriously, the foundation cause of this unfortunate an-
tagonism is because so many required subjects are of such com-
paratively small or even trivial importance in genuine culture.
The engineer will seek mathematics for his bridges and sur-
veys, the scientific philologist and translator the original Greek
and Latin, and in metaphysics the literary student will always
find much beautiful literature and poetry but no short-cut
"systems of knowledge." If the teacher of such subjects has,
perchance, more than a mercenary interest in them, it is usually
because he has had no experience with better kinds of knowl-
edge and has become attached to them on the pleasure-pain
habit principle by which one can come to feel lonely for any
kind of torture, if it's only kept up long enough, and in this
educative process the ascetic devotee is not killed.
Now, of course, the reason which is given by teachers of
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490 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
such subjects for forcing so many students into this attitude
of antagonism is because they need "discipline" — "Entbehren-
sollst dul sollst entbehren I" This reminds one of the usual-
pursuit of technique among musicians — always "practicing" —
and how few ever get to Beethoven and Brahms. But in an.
intellectual art, even less than in a partly manual art, is any
long exclusive training necessary. For culture as well as for
specialization one gets all the necessary discipline and training
by working directly at a subject which will also give some
worthy result- The deductive reasoning training of the "dis-
ciplinary studies" can, on the other hand, be shown to be posi-
tively vicious, for they scarcely touch on the processes of ob-
servation and induction of cause and effect by which our real
as against our verbal knowledge is gained. Many a lesser and
younger man laments with Darwin : "Nothing could have been
worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school,,
as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught except a
little ancient geography and history. The school, as a means of
education to me, was simply a blank." (Darwin's Life and Let-
ters, I. p. 29. See also pp. 353 and 354.) "During the three
years which I spent at Cambridge my time was wasted, as far
as academical studies were concerned, as completely as at Edin-
borough and at school." (Ibid, p. 40.) Contrast this with his
experience where he had some valuable knowledge to learn.
"I have always felt that I owe to the voyage (of the Beagle)
the first real training or education of my mind. I was led to
attend closely to several branches of natural history, and thus
my powers of observation were improved. * * * I dis-
covered, though unconsciously and insensibly, that the pleasure
of observing and reasoning was a much higher one than that of
skill and sport." (Ibid, pp. 51 and 53.) The qualities of mind to
which he modestly attributes his success are a most touching
and suggestive commentary on our educational methods- "The
most important have been, the love of science, unbounded pa-
tience in long reflecting over any subject, industry in observing
and collecting facts, and a fair share of invention as well as of
common sense." (Ibid, pp. 85 and 86.)
But the fetish of discipline also extends to too many subjects
of real value in themselves, and the student coming to Physics^
Astronomy, Zoology or Economics, e. g., with anticipation of
profit and pleasure, is too often here repulsed into antagonism
by the disciplinary form in which such knowledge is given.
How vividly I recall again my anticipations as a senior in learn-
ing something of the wonderful workings of our own minds.
But 'on being forced to learn a lot of abstract definitions, to
stumble through the Latin topography of a disreputable brain
model, to perform algebraical juggles with "intellect," "sensi-
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INSTRUCTOR AND STUDENT 401
bility" and "will" to produce the "Ego," with the final harrowing;
of our souls by a tricky examination on such nonsense — this
was enough to turn one's anticipations into bitterness against
the subject as well as its teacher. But when with other teachers
I found an inexhaustible store of most fascinating and compan-
ionable facts and inferences of our mental life, I naturally felt
not merely contempt for the former teacher, whose superficial'
knowledge was coached up daily for each "recitation" by a med-
ical school physiologist, but a righteous indignation at such an
imposition on culture. Also in Greek we were disciplined with
the deduction process of pigeon-holing the kaleidoscopic stream
of words into their proper compartments in Hadley's Grammar
and in laboriously acquiring through the Lexicon a new set of
visual symbols for our perceptions and ideas. So that even the
few great plays and little Plato we did read amidst the mass
of commonplace stuff was not for the great ideas and poetry.
And, later, on giving up the pretense of using a set of symbols
whose difficulties prevented our getting beyond the mere words r
I found in English translations of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripi-
des and in Jowett's Plato a world of beauty and greatness which
either had been conscientiously hidden from us, or which — as I
much more suspect — most of the Greek teachers themselves
had never known.
The important subject of astronomy was our most hated
enemy, for a sour face and gruff voice welcomed us with, "Get
out your logarithm tables!" With groans we reached under
the seats for those blue-colored horrors (they haunt me still
through the fifteen intervening years), and under watchdog
guard we struggled to plot the eccentric paths of comets. This
was a much more disciplinary ordeal than our out-of-class-room
plots which we copied or bought from the one man in the class
who could really work them. As for getting any idea of the
vastness and wonders of descriptive astronomy — so essential to
the heliocentric modesty of the scientific standpoint — or any
demonstration of the apparatus and methods used, or any en-
couragement to look up from the logarithm books to the mar-
velous stars above, — that was considered as yielding to original
sin. That might do for boarding-school girls, but for college
men it was too interesting and easy.
Now, when one studies psychologically the problems of
pleasure and pain — the feeling element of our mental make-up
and the basis of our so-called "will"— one finds quite enough
evidence for the important function of self-denial, i. e., a neces-
sary endurance of pain for future happiness. No one realizes
this important and inexorable law more than the utilitarian in
ethics. Read the autobiography of Mill himself, the letters of
George Eliot, Darwin and Tennyson for heroic examples. But
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492 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
as all persons with any decent home life will get some experi-
ence in self-denial, instead of emphasizing it as the main prin-
ciple of our higher education, ought we not rather to cultivate
the complementary principle of present happiness for future
happiness ? It is the contrast of motives of pain versus motives
of pleasure. Not merely German scholarship and English cul-
ture are made by leading and not driving, but if we want such
scholarship and culture engrafted on our generous and ener-
getic American nature we must outgrow this American school-
boy heritage of Puritanical asceticism and militant force.
Where experience finds that a lack of foresight for one's better
happiness is positively dangerous to all concerned, as in small
children and in criminals, there we are forced to use motives
of pain. But let us fashion our higher educational systems
less for the exclusive benefit of these weak classes and more
for the stronger characters who really want more knowledge
to guide their foresight for the greatest happiness of all con-
cerned and in whom the inevitable fatigue and self-denials are
more than compensated by their daily springs of happiness. At
the end of such culture days one's deepest heart modestly ex-
claims:
"Verweile doch, du blst so schtfn!
Es kann die Spur von meinen Erdentagen
Nicht in Aonen untergehn. —
Im vorgeftihl von solchem hohen Gltick
Oenies ich jetzt <den httchsten Augenblick."
Summary: The prevalent attitude of antagonism or even
enmity between the American undergraduate and most of his
teachers is due chiefly, (i) to the continued presence among the
required studies of so many subjects of comparatively small or
trivial value, and (2) to the continued teaching of these for their
fallaciously supposed value for the mind and heart as discipline,
and (3) to the extension of disciplinary methods to more worthy
kinds of knowledge. Were these causes removed by the better
education of the teachers and the introduction of more German
university freedom, this deplorable antagonism would cease.
Harlow Gale.
(Reprinted from the Minnesota Magazine.)
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** SOCIALISM ABROAD ^
AUSTRIA.
The elections In Austria are now practically over with, and it is
possible to give most of the results. But In order to in any way appre-
ciate the facts, some knowledge is necessary of the difficulties under
which the socialists have struggled. In the first place there is a
scheme of election embracing first and second ballots and secondary
electors that Is so complicated that all explanations that we have been
able to find have only made it more unintelligible. This system was
purposely so planned in order that its complications might be used
to defeat the socialists. Then all the power of private and govern-
mental intimidation was set in motion to influence those who might
be lucky enough to get a chance to express their opinions. In one elec-
tion district in Galicia the election was only announced late in the
evening before it took place, and only eight voters appeared to elect
the four members from that constituency. In another case a crier
was sent through the village, and when the people assembled only
those favorable to the government were permitted to register, and a
socialist who protested against this procedure was promptly arrested.
The most outrageous gerrymandering of districts was resorted to.
Schnodika, in Galicia, with a population of 6,000 and entitled to
twelve representatives, being found to be strongly socialist, the prefect
declared that the population was only 1,500, and hence entitled to but
three representatives. Then it must always be remembered that
Austria is simply a geographical expression for a certain extent of
territory, with no homogeneity of language or race. This fact has
been taken advantage of to exploit race hatred to an extent unknown
elsewhere on earth. Under all these conditions the socialists were
prepared for defeat, and were more than satisfied when they made
substantial gains. In Bohemia they suffered their worst check, losing
several seats. This was because the appeal to nationalities found
more dupes here than elsewhere. In Cracow, Dazynfiki was returned
by a vote of 13,153, out of 22,103 votes cast. In Lemberg, Ernest
Breiter, Socialist, received 14,057 out of 23,338. "In Vienna," says the
correspondent of the London Times, "notwithstanding the doctoring
of the electoral lists to the advantage of the Christian Socialists, that
faction received an irretrievable reverse." It should be said that
this "Christian Socialist" party is what we in America would call a
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494 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
"fake" party to mislead the Social Democrats. Nevertheless, the
socialist vote in Vienna was raised from 88,00 to 95,000, and while
Adler was defeated for a seat in Vienna, he was elected from Brunn.
We shall try to secure tabulated figures of the vote and representation
for our next number.
The Austrian government has been so frightened by the growth of
socialism that the ministry has proposed the nationalization of the
mines and the coal trade as a means of fighting it.
The Vienna ArbeiterZeltung has just published a remarkable general
order recently issued by the imperial minister of war concerning the
treatment of soldiers suspected of being socialists. It provides
stringent punishment for any attempt at circulating revolutionary
literature, and urges the making of frequent searches of the premises
and effects of officers or privates who have been known to have any
connection with revolutionary bodies. Meantime bread riots are
prevailing in the textile districts of Hungary, and the troops have
been called out to shoot down the people who are marching the
streets crying "Give us work or give us food." Several persons have
already been killed and wounded in these riots, and their number and
extent are constantly growing.
* * *
ITALY.
The following interesting little incident somehow escaped the notice
of American capitalist newspapers, although their correspondents had
no difficulty in finding out every time the Prince of Wales sneezed.
In the city of Genoa there is a laborers' hall, with which is connected
a judicial tribunal for the adjustment of difficulties between laborers
and capitalists. Lately speeches were being made there by the
socialists that were decidedly displeasing to the governing powers,
and the mayor, Garronni, summarily disbanded the laborers' organ-
ization and abolished the court of arbitration. The following is taken
from the account of the resulting events as given by the Genoa Ar-
beiter Zeltung: The hard and unjust order of the Prefect Garronni
first became known at noon of the 17th of December; by evening the
great harbor was deserted. By the evening of the 18th the number
of strikers had reached 10,000, and 200 coal ships lay deserted in the
harbor unable to receive a cargo. Telegrams were sent to Port Said
and Messina to notify the Indian steamers not to stop at Genoa, but
to land at Marseilles Instead. The Board of Trade immediately began
to recognize the. far-reaching significance of the strike and to calculate
their losses: The first day cost them a million francs; the second,
two million; the third, four; and the fourth, seven million.
As soon as opportunity offered the government sent in great bodies
of soldiers, and ordered the man-of-war "St. Bon" into the harbor,
and immediately a large number of laborers throughout the building
trades laid down their tools, and finally the street car workers joined,
raising the number of strikers to 17,000. Then the weather came to
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
SOCIALISM ABROAD 495
Ihe assistance of the laborers. The thermometer began to fall, and
millions of francs' worth of choice wine on the docks and In the
■ships was threatened with destruction. Telegrams began to poor
in upon the government from the wine merchants all over Europe
demanding that the strike be ended. The government was compelled
to act, and finally removed Garronnl from office. The disbanded
organizations were reorganized with practically the same member-
ship, and the strike was declared off as a complete victory for the
laborers.
♦ * ♦
GERMANY.
In our last Issue we referred to the speech of Auer In regard to the
letter sent by Graf Poaadowsky, of the Imperial cabinet, to Herr
Bueck, a wealthy manufacturer, demanding 12,000 marks to assist
In pushing the "Penitentiary Bill" through the Reichstag. The
socialists have made such an exposure of this and other similar acts
that Posadowsky has at last been driven into retirement— not, as the
Vorwaerts explains, because he was corrupt, but because he was so
unfortunate as to be unsuccessful In his corruption and to meet with
exposure, and. worst crime of all because he did not succeed In
passing the bill for which he was paid.
At the elections which have just taken place for the Parliament or
Landtag of Wurtenberg 300,000 electors voted. The Reactionaries
obtained 95,000 votes; the Anti-Catholics, 72,000; the Democrats,
71,000, and the Socialists, 60,000. The Socialist vote has nearly
-doubled itself since 1895, while the Democrats have lost 20,000 votes.
Two Socialists have been returned to the Landtag, while ten have a
place in the second ballot
German Socialists have been very successful in the municipal elec-
tions this year. All the Socialist candidates were elected at Reichen-
hein, in Saxony, while others were returned at Marienthal, Altenhain,
Hohenkirchen, Schedewitz, Rotschau and Leisnig— all In Saxony.
News of a Socialist victory comes also from Jonltz, in Anhalt.
* * *
BELGIUM.
The socialist municipality of Liege has appropriated 1,500 francs to
be distributed among the various unions for the benefit of their
unemployed members. In Ghent the socialists are establishing a
special municipal fund for the same purpose, which will result in
a yearly annuity of 60,000 francs, which will be divided among the
unions in proportion to the number of members already receiving
out-of-work benefits from the union itself. The municipal council of
Naast has begun the feeding of the school children, and that of
Schaerbeck has prosecuted a number of contractors who violated the
minimum wage law recently enacted by the socialist council of that
city.
The Clericals of Brussels are just seeking, through a law which
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49* INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
has been nullified for twenty-five years to secure control of the com-
munal schools. Against this the socialists are making a strong fight
The socialist women especially are holding large gatherings, and the-
agltation is serving to introduce them to the movement for universal
suffrage, regardless of sex. Madame Gattl de Gamond has been ex-
ceptionally active in this work, and was recently arrested by the
police for distributing circulars against the clerical influence in the
schools.
* * *
FRANCE
Word now comes from France that all the terms of unity between
the different socialist parties have been arranged save as to the
manner of organization in the Department of the Seine, and this
is being discussed with every probability of an amicable settlement
being reached. It is hoped that this statement will once for all settle
the falsehood which has been industriously circulated in this country,
that the Parti Ouvrier ever contemplated entering into a "new inter-
national" with the DeLeonites.
Vaillaint brought forward a motion in the French Chamber last
week asking for full powers of self-government to be given to the
City of Paris. Many important unanimous resolutions passed by the
municipal council have repeatedly been annulled by the government
officials. Valllant's resolution was lost, not because of Its tenor, but
because he coupled it with a vote of censure on the government. The
terms of his resolution were brought forward afterwards by another
deputy, with the omission of the clause of censure, when it was
passed by 360 to 153 votes, the premier himself declaring in its favor.
* * *
DENMARK.
A recently published report shows that of 100,300 male laborers
76,800 are organized in unions and, in some sections, as many as 95
per cent and 96 per cent are organized. In the larger cities and towns
the intellectual as well as the manual laborers are organized.
The Socialists in the Folkething have introduced a proposition for a
hospital for consumptives, providing for an appropriation of 40,000 kr.
to expend in the preparation of plans for the erection of the same.
Con Klausen showed that of the 6,000 deaths from consumption, in
Denmark, each year 5,000 were among the laboring class, who could
not afford to pay the charges necessary to receive accommodations In
existing sanitariums.
The recent municipal elections have been a magnificent triumph for
the socialists. The number of socialist municipal councilors has been
raised from 30 elected in 1894 to 170, and nearly every large city is
now in the hands of the socialists. *
The socialist memfbers of parliament are pushing a bill providing
for old age pensions. The Social Demokrat, of Copenhagen, has re-
cently been enlarged from fourteen to sixteen pages, and now has the
largest circulation of any paper in Denmark.
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THE WORLD OF LABOR
By Max S. Hayes
There never visited this country a British trade unionist and labor
agitator who became such a universal favorite as Pete Curran, one
of the fraternal delegates to the A. F. of L. convention. Curran, who
is an intellectual and yet modest and sociable chap, made a brief
tour of the country after the Louisville meeting, speaking in the prin-
cipal cities in the interest of the Social Democratic party, and with
the exception of one or two places had good audiences everywhere
and added to his host of friends. His advice to American trade
unionists was timely and is causing much comment among organized
men and women and even thinking outsiders. "You can never solve
the social problem by strikes," Curran told our people everywhere.
"That is my opinion after twenty years' experience in the labor move-
ment. After spending more money in England during the last twenty-
five years on the industrial battle-field than would keep 700 men
legislating in our interests in the House of Parliament, we have come
to the conclusion that we must have something to say about the
making of the laws under which we have to work, and we must get
away from the old orthodox political parties if we hope to secure
what we seek. The only possibility of our securing labor legislation
is by sending our own men into the governing bodies, not as our
masters, but as our servants. There is only one solution of the
labor problem, and that is the democratization of industry, the com-
mon ownership of the means of production, for as long as we allow
the land and the machinery of the country to be held as private
monopolies by the few, so long will we have industrial disputes and
upheavals." Curran assured the writer that all the active young men
in the British trade union movement are Socialists, and that if the
English workers enjoyed the franchise as freely as do their American
brothers, the former would roll up two million votes for Socialism
without a doubt At the coming Parliamentary election the trade
unionists of the other side will undoubtedly cut a respectable figure
in Increasing the Socialist vote.
The big strikes of building craftsmen in Chicago and molders in
Cleveland are dragging along their weary way. The Chicago Build-
ing Trades Council issued a statement showing that before the lock-
out a year ago 20,000 members were affiliated with that body, of
which number 14,680 still remain. Six crafts withdrew, leaving
407
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408 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
twenty-Are still in the Council. The Cleveland molders won a point,
when the Bowler Co., one of the largest concerns in the bosses'
association, withdrew and signed the scale, after having lost $20,000.
All the other foundries look like small forts, and it is hardly probable
that any decisive change will occur before another six months.—
East Side bakers in New York are on strike for more wages, shorter
hours and better sanitary conditons. Several large concerns yielded.
Bosses organized an opposition "union," which they industriously
nursed, when one day Joseph Barondess and other bona fide union
agitators secured the floor, and, after delivering speeches burning with
eloquence, the 600 pets of the bosses formed in line and marched
to union headquarters and joined the organization.
Cigarmakers are disturbed at the action of the American Tobacco
Co., the trust, In entering the cigar business. The combine has
secured control of several factories and incorporated a $10,000,000
offspring, and it is stated that strong inroads will be made on the
trade through wholesale houses and distributors that it controls. The
trust also controls much of the raw material and the latest labor-
saving appliances, while the capital behind it is reported as being
Rockefeller's pile. The American company's treatment of the tobacco
workers is too well known to need elaboration, as it never hesitates
to smash unionism wherever it appears, and at present desperate
struggles are being waged In Louisville, St. Louis and New York
state, while it has raised prices 116 per cent, absorbed the big factories
and driven out the jobbers by the score. The trust will have nothing
to do with the blue label of the organized cigarmakers, and far-seeing
craftsmen fear trouble. The union is in good condition, however, and
will never yield to the dictation of the trust
National Secretary Butscher, of the Social Democratic party, has
issued over forty charters to locals In as many cities and towns
during the last two months.— The total vote of the S. D. P. has
reached nearly a hundred thousand. The old Socialist Labor partj
polled 34,000, a loss of 52,000 in two years.— Rev. Vail has been nom-
inated for governor by the S. D. P. in New Jersey and is stumping
that state, and Job Harriman is on a speaking tour through New
York state.— Chicago N. B. B. held convention in latter city last
month, and the Socialists in favor of complete organic union are
now voting on the question of holding national convention at some
central point within a few months, many independent and unattached
bodies favoring the step.
Sixteen large boot and shoe manufacturing concerns are forming a
trust, having been forced to combine by the leather, shoe machinery
and other trusts. It is the plan to establish stores In the leading
cities and to sell to the trade direct, thus abolishing middlemen and
absorbing their profits.
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THE WORLD OF LABOR 499
Steel pool has been organized and thousands of commission men
are to be let out—Railway consolidations, it is estimated, will do
away so thoroughly with competition and centralize work that 25,000
agents and employes of various kinds will be discharged.— Preliminary
steps are being taken to consolidate four or five of the large iron and
steel trusts, and in Eastern financial circles it is declared that in
the near future there will be a close combination of the railways,
hard and soft coal, coke and certain iron and steel companies, with
a few steamship lines thrown in to add power and strength to the
gigantic "community of interests." The comrades who are thus splen-
didly organizing industry do not wear red buttons.
Add following new Socialist publications to the long and growing
list: The Missouri Socialist, St Louis, Mo.; Wage- Worker, Detroit,
Mich.; Social Democrat, Williamsport, Pa.; The Challenge, Los An-
geles, Cal.; Propaganda, Central City, Colo.; Industrial Democracy,
Colorado Springs, Colo.; Southern Socialist, Blum, Tex.
Factory inspectors of Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio and
other states are Issuing their annual reports, and in not one of them
does it appear that woman and child labor is decreasing. On the
contrary, the increase in every state is marked. Neither are any
remedies advanced to solve this grave problem. The criminal, pauper
and insanity statistics, also showing increasing tendencies, reflect the
situation correctly.
Glass trust and the independent concerns came to an agreement
and shoved up prices 30 per cent.— Fruit and vegetable growers in
Florida and Cuba are combining.
Laborers in the mills in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys, to
the number of 5,000, had a New Year's present stuffed in their "full
dinner pails" in the shape of a reduction in wages from $1.90 to $1.65
a day. Now they are talking strike, but not at the polls. National
steel trust also handed its employes a Christmas present, 10 per cent
cut. Iron workers are in a sadly demoralized condition.
Nothing much has come of the ice trust scandal in New York except
to give the Supreme Court of that state an opportunity to hand
down a decision that practically annuls the anti-trust law.— Another
decision of the same court knocks out the law compelling contractors
to have stone for public buildings cut in the state, which law was
passed at the request of granite cutters and other craftsmen, and the
latter decision was probably made to please the Standard Oil inter-
ests, which are said to be absorbing the quarries of New England.
The "labor laws" fare poorly when they come in contact with the
stone wall of the "communism of capital."
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600 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
Street railway strikes In Reading and Scranton resulted in satis-
factory compromises in which the workers received important conces-
sions. The national union is enjoying healthy growth.
National Building Trades Council held largest convention in its
history in Cincinnati last month. Some bitter criticisms were aimed
at the A. F. of L. for the latter body's practical repudiation of 'trade
autonomy" and apparent attempt to absorb the building unions and
combine them as a trade section, but cooler counsel seemingly pre-
vailed and the threatened war was averted.
Brooklyn Labor Lyceum, a splendid edifice, was destroyed by fire
recently and the unionists' interests sustained a heavy loss. An
attempt will be made to rebuild it, and to that end every union in
the country will be asked to donate one dollar. It's a worthy cause.
Textile workers are dumping "trade autonomy" overboard, having
suffered enough defeats. Representatives from mule spinners, loom
fliers, carders and pickers, weavers and clash tenders held conven-
tion in Washington and organized the American Federation of Textile
Operatives. Other branches of the industry will also Join the new
amalgamation.
Along in May the metal trades, headed by the machinists, are going
to ask for the nine-hour workday with the same pay they now receive
for ten hours. The bosses demur and in some cases demand that the
men accept a reduction, and there is liable to be trouble before the
matter is settled.
Printers are negotiating with National Newspaper Publishers' Asso-
ciation to establish Joint arbitration and conciliation board.
Robert Rives La Monte, the well-known young author and lecturer,
has gone to New Zealand to study the conditions of the laboring people
in that much-talked-about little country.
Reports come from "our" new possessions to the effect that the
building trades in Honolulu are winning the eight-hour day, and that
several more labor agitators and organizers in Porto Rico have suc-
ceeded in getting out of jail In the Philippines our new fellow-citi-
zens are still on strike in the cigar industry, while some continue
to strike against Uncle Sam, thus making work for American laborers
who manufacture guns, bullets, beer, whisky, etc.
Miners held their national convention, showed up stronger than ever
numerically and financially, re-elected old officers, and are now nego-
tiating with operators for adoption of new scale.
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SOCIALISM AND RELIGION
Professor George D. rlerron
♦There is a common root and identity between the philosophy of
socialism and the philosophy of Jesus. Whether it knows it or not,
the socialist movement is preparing the material for the realization of
the love-life of the world. The socialistic stage of development is a
necessary training of men in mutuality of responsibility and service.
Socialism is the body in which the soul of love must learn to express
and liberate itself; and the kingdom of heaven can no more pass by
the co-operative commonwealth than the spirit of man can dispense
with his physical body while fulfilling the functions of earth-life and
labor. Putting it on no other grounds, socialism is a spiritual neces-
sity to the race; through no other than the socialistic experience can
the race come to its true self -consciousness, and blossom in the full-
ness and glory of its power and liberty. Men must learn how
to live together; how to work together for a common good; how to
combine for free and creative ends, and not under the mere stress of
defense. Mam's discovery of power, and of how to use it in making
the kind of a world he wants, can never far outrun the development
of his co-operative or spiritual sense. Power is co-operation; love is
co-operation; spirituality is co-operation. It is only through the
socialistic experience of the world that this co-operative or spiritual
sense, this mind or will to love, can come to its realization; it is only
from the association and unity of all men and interests that the free
individual can at last emerge. And it is for this reason that some
of us are socialists; not because socialism is our goal, but because we
see in socialism a conservative and constructive preparation of the
way of the Lord of love; we are socialists en route to the liberty
which love brings.
II.
Even the class struggle, at which so many lgnorantly take offense,
* Taken from one of Mr. Herron'g Central Music Hall lectures.
601
'* Digitized by VjOOQ IC
60S INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
is at bottom a love-struggle. The class-consciousness of the socialist
movement is a profoundly spiritual revelation, a most significantly
Christian experience. The conscious solidarity of the working class
is an indispensable prelude to the ultimate solidarity of the world.
For socialism to give up its class-conscious philosophy would be for it
to sell itself out— to sell out not only all that makes socialism potent
and possible, but to sell out as well that experience which alone can
train labor for the leadership of the will to love, and prepare society
for the kingdom of heaven. Those who object to the class-conscious
appeal on the ground that it is divisive and anti-Christian would do
well to read their New Testaments with open eyes; for no such align-
ment of class against class, no such intensive class-conscious appeal,
has ever been made as that of Jesus. There is no such class-conscious
movement in history as that which Jesus initiated. First and last
and all the time the disciples and friends of his idea were told to
stand together; to be true to one another with a love that would
never be beaten and a loyalty that would never fail. By this shall all
men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another,,
even as I have loved you. By this shall all men know that ye are
socialists, if ye stand together as workers, true to one another with a
comradeship that cannot fail or betray, asking not your freedom from
any masters, but finding freedom in your own unity of Interest and
faith and devotion. Do you not see that the call of socialism to
worklngmen to unite is but the modernized and economized appeal of
Jesus to his disciples to love one another? Do you not see that the
class-conscious command of the socialist is identical with the class-
conscious command and experience of the early communities or
brotherhoods of the sweet and brave Christian springtime? You will
find how radical is the Identity, if you go deep enough into the class-
conscious philosophy, and then read the burning and divisive com-
mands and warnings of Jesus and his apostles in the light of that
philosophy.
III.
But there is a philosophical analogy that goes deeper into the-
human fact than the mere identity of appeal. Jesus distinctly re-
garded the wealthy and priestly and governing orders as belonging
to a robber class; the horrible fact that these gained their luxury an<V
power through oppressing and exploiting both the labor and the souls
of the poor was always before him and sometimes loaded his words-
Digitized by VjOOQlC
SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 508
with terrible denunciations. His intensely class-conscious feeling was
profoundly scientific; it was not a mere sentiment of Justice, but a
plain and clear-sighted recognition of the fact that one class of people
was living off another class; that the small class which did the living
and the robbing ruled the large class which did the producing without
living; that the class which really had no faith and obeyed no law
gave religion and made laws for the class which was always insurgent
with faith and yet submissive to every law which injustice could
enact. He saw that it was impossible to rationalize or spiritualize a
world-order that was a huge and hideous parasitism; so his friends
and disciples were told to stand together as a class until they should
increase unto the power to overcome the world for the kingdom of
heaven. His class-conscious attitude and command was precisely that
of the modern socialist, however different his outlook and philosophy
in other things. The early Christians were bidden never to forget
that they were the poor, the disinherited and the despised; that they
were the oppressed, the enslaved and the outcast; that they would
be hated of all men and persecuted and slain by all institutions, as the
cost of their daring to be men in the image of God. Against the rich'
and the powerful, the capitalized and governing class, the vested inter-
ests of institutions, they were to stand together as one man, and stand
as against the destroyers of the world, the despoiiers and slayers of
souls and bodies. Only by the power and joy of their class-conscious
unity could they truly love one another and form a common defense
against treason and lovelessness.
IV.
I am not forgetting that the socialist rather ostentatiously insists
that his working motive is his own personal good; and I am some-
times reminded of the cant phrases of professional pietism by the
way in which the socialist thrusts this personal good of his into the
foreground. He makes so much of it that he gets to be an Inverted
pietist, just as a friend of mine so insists on his democracy that he
has become a sort of inverted and flagrant snob. But— so full of
strange things is our world— the socialist who insists on the motive
of his own personal good, will give up his work, suffer starvation,
and make every conceivable sacrifice in order to be true to his com-
rades and his cause, while we Christians who pivot our religion on
the idea of self-sacrifice will often not make the slightest real sacri-
fice of self for our Christ or the common good. I am afraid that the
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504 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
personal good of the socialist is more significantly Christian than the
self-sacrifice of those of us who call ourselves Christians.
But, after all, this is a question of words. Most of our discussions
about the antithesis between self-sacrifice and self-interest are idle
definitions. In the end it is every man's personal good to sacrifice him-
self for a common good. The highest self-interest of the individual,
his real Joy and liberty, lie in pouring himself out in the service of
his brothers; in throwing himself away for them, if need be. And so
every man's true self-sacrifice lies in presenting the richest and
noblest possible individuality to the world. True self-sacrifice and
true self-interest are merely different names for the same principles
of being— different names for self-realization, for wholeness and free-
dom of life. On the whole, our attitude toward ourselves and our
brothers is about the same. We not only must love our neighbors as
ourselves; that is about what we generally do, whether we know it or
not If we try to live the life of free sons of God ourselves, we shall
have most sensitive and sacred regard for the free individuality and
divine worth of others. If we truly love our neighbors, we will nobly
love ourselves for their sakes, and for their sakes make our lives
whole; and if we truly love ourselves, we will seek to awaken In our
brothers the strongest and loveliest selfhood. a. cross-section of our
feeling, our thinking and doing, taken anywhere and at any time, will
reveal about the same quality of love and life in relation to self and
to others. Neighbor-love and self-love will always register the same
quality hi the spiritual thermometer. Love is the true and final
equilibriumizer.
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*
BOOK REVIEWS
*
Socialism and Modern Science. Enrico Ferri. Translated by Robt.
Biyes LaMonte. Cloth, 213 pp., $1.00.
Since the translation of Marx' Capital there has been no greater
contribution to the socialist movement of the English speaking world
than Is afforded by this work. Under the title "Soclalisme et Science
Positive" it had already become one of the classics of the French,
Belgian and Italian movement.
Beginning with an extract from an address of Prof. Ernest Haeckel,
who attempted to show that Darwinism was hostile to the socialist
philosophy, Prof. Ferri takes up one by one the various phases of the
subject, and demonstrates that not only are the premises of socialism
in perfect accord with the doctrines of evolution, but that Darwinism,
biology and socialism in the science of society are but expressions
of the same thought principles In different fields. Taking up the
various alleged contradictions between Darwinism and socialism, he
shows that 'the equality of individuals" proposed by socialism is only
one of equality of opportunity, and that "socialism does not deny
Inequality; it merely wishes to utilize this Inequality as one of the fac-
tors leading to the free, prolific and many-sided development of
human life." The "struggle for life," is discussed and he shows that
when the means of existence are assured to all the members of society
the principle of social solidarity will be increased and the struggle will
no longer be between the members of that society. "The survival of
the fittest" Is shown to mean the elimination of such social abnormal-
ities as are represented by the present capitalist class, and hence this
law is a natural corrolary socialist philosophy.
But It Is in the positive and constructive side of the work that Its
greatest contribution to socialist philosophy is made. The chapters
on "Socialism as a Consequence of Darwinism" and "Evolution and
Socialism" constitute the most logical exposition of the fundamentals
of socialism to be found in the English language. It is difficult to see
how they can be read by anyone with reasoning power and not con-
vince him of the truth of socialism. The book is a perfect arsenal of
ideas for socialist writers and speakers, and must form a part of the
equipment of every well-armed socialist.
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506
606 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
FruitfuUness. Emile Zola. Translated by Ernest Alfred VizeteUy.
Doubleday, Page ft Co. Cloth, 468 pp., $2.00.
In this latest work of the great French writer, the population ques-
tion, that is now such a burning one in France, is taken up and
handled without gloves. Indeed, it is handled so openly and frankly
in the original French that the translator has found himself com-
pelled to cut out large portions of the original. At first sight it seems
as if he had done more of this than was required, even by the ridic-
ulous prudery which reigns in Anglo-Saxon countries. But we under-
stand that a translation of an earlier work of Zola's caused him to
suffer arrest and imprisonment, and hence he cannot be blamed for
being over-careful. But in spite of the censor, an extremely powerful
novel remains, which in its dramatic strength almost reminds one of
Hugo's in some places. At the same time it is a sociological treatise,
which no one who wishes a thorough grasp of the population question
can afford to neglect The central theme of the book is the story of
the conquest of a fruitful earth by a fruitful race. There is much of
the idyllic about it and much that is almost ridiculously impossible
under present conditions, but there is every now and then a hint that
the author realizes this fact, and as his next work is announced upon
the subject of "Labor," it is probable that this phase will be there
treated.
The Real Chinese Question. Chester Holcombe. Dodd, Mead & Co.
Cloth, 386 pp., $1.50.
We have not the slightest hesitation in saying that this is by far the
best work yet published for the general reader upon the situation in
China. The author was for many years Interpreter, Secretary of Lega-
tion and acting Minister of the United States at Pekin, and hence
speaks with the authority of knowledge. He is the first of the English
speaking writers that seem to have been inspired with any desire to
tell the truth regarding the Chinese. His discussion of native charac-
teristics and customs throws a flood of light on a much beclouded sub-
ject He points out how the literati with the system of promotion by
examination make possible an extremely rapid transformation of every
portion of the Chinese Empire once that it is decided by those in power
to Introduce capitalism. But it is in his discussion of the relations of
China with the outside world that the most valuable portion of the
book Is found. He notes that the Chinese "have never understood nor
admitted that the main purpose for which governments were created
was to foster commerce and money making." The story of the In-
vasion of China by the capitalist barbarbians of the nineteenth century
is one that may well rival the similar Invasions of Europe by the Huns
and Vandals. This work points out how treaties have been interpo-
lated, harbors bombarded in time of peace, gambling dens established
on Chinese soil against the will of the government, outrageous foreign
Digitized by VjOOQIC
BOOK RE VIE WS 507
"claims" collected by force, her high officials grossly Insulted by cap-
italist representatives, territory extorted from her by all manner of
deceit and force, and finally how the horrors of the oplnm traffic
were forced upon her at the muzzles of cannon In spite of the most
thorough and determined efforts to save her people from this awful
scourge. "The recital reminds one rather of the practices of a card-
sharper and his confederates, than of the broad-minded statesman-
ship which deserves respect and honor. . . . Here are to be seen
the Great Powers of the earth squabbling among themselves for in-
fluence and prestige with China, then, by turns,, choking her, holding
a revolver at her head or a knife to her heart, and lecturing her upon
the inestimable benefits to be derived from western civilization, and
all the time wondering why China hates the foreigner so bitterly, and
why it is so increasingly difficult to make any money out of her."
Light on the Deep, A Tale of Today, by George Henry Grafton.
The Neale Co., Washington, D. 0. Paper, 128 pp., 25 cents.
A very clever little satire on present conditions that will carry the
gospel of discontent into many places where a more pretentious work
would not find entrance.
The Fall and the Restoration, by Imogene C. Pales. Peter David-
son, Loudeville, Ga. Paper, 55 pp., 30 cents.
In a most excellent literary style the story of man's evolution is
traced in graphic outline from geologic times down to the present*
and the inevitableness of the co-operative commonwealth as a result
of this evolution is pointed out. The author deals much in symbolic
and mystical thought, and the work is a queer but interesting and
suggestive combination of materials and mysticism.
The Story of Nineteenth Century and Modern Science. Henry
Smith Williams. Harper ft Brothers. Cloth, 475 pp., $2.50.
The nineteenth century has been pre-eminently the century of material
achievements, and there have been many attempts to tell its story,
and this book is certainly one of the best, if not the best, of these.
It is technical enough to be exact, but not too technical to be easily
understood by the ordinary reader. The work opens with a review
of "Science at the Beginning of the Century," then a chapter is given
to the century's progress in each field of knowledge, and the final
chapter is devoted to "Some Unsolved Scientific Problems." It is
wonderful story of advance from the time when scientists were dis-
cussing "phlogiston," "imponderables" and "fluid forces" to the day of
the X-ray and experimental psychology. It forms an inexhaustible
storehouse of knowledge to those who wish to trace the progress of the
increase of knowledge. It is impossible in a review of such a work
to give any summary of its contents, for it is already condensed
almost to the limit Perhaps the most interesting chapter of all is the
«08 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIS W
one on "The Century's Progress in Experimental Psychology/'
because this really seems to be coming closer to some of the great
mysteries of nature, but all are Interesting and all are valuable.
The Inalienable Rights of Man. J. R. Rogers, Governor of Washing-
ton. Printed by the author. Paper, 35 pp.
Starting from the eighteenth century philosophy of "inalienable
rights/' it is shown that private ownership of land is incompatible
with that philosophy, as worked out by the founders of this govern-
ment The author/ like thousands— and, Indeed, some millions of
others, as the last campaign would seem to show— does not appear
to realize that philosophies do not make history, and that private
property in land (and capital, as well) will not be abolished because
of conflict with the philosophy of either Rousseau or Jefferson, but
because it is in conflict with economic progress.
Shattered Idols. "A Lawyer." Schulte Publishing Co. Cloth, 82 pp.
This author would trace all the ills to which our present society is
due to Judge Marshall's "doctrine of implied powers," and in so doing
is apparently all unconscious that Instead of tracing a line of legal
interpretation he is really tracing a line of economic evolution. But
he does his work well, and brings to light much that is valuable to
the student of American social history, and has produced a little work
that Is well worth the reading of those who are interested in seeing
how capitalism has intrenched itself in the legal machinery of this
country.
Beyond the Black Ocean. Rev. T. McGrady. Charles H. Kerr &
Co. Cloth, 804 pp., $1.00; paper, 50 cents.
Both by reason of its author, who is the pastor of the Roman Cath-
olic Church at Bellevue, Ky., and because of the character of the book
itself this is one of the most significant socialist publications of the
year. The story has a plot of considerable strength and great interest,
and there are many passages that are bound to be widely quoted as
gems of socialist thought There is also a vein of humor running
through it that makes it quite distinctive from the majority of so-
called socialist romances.
Solaris Farm; A Story of the Twentieth Century. Milan C. Edson.
Published by the author at 1728 N. Jersey avenue, N. W., Washing-
ton, D. O. Paper, 747 pp.
Of writing Utopias there is no end and never can be while imagina-
tion continues to be easier to exercise than investigation. So far as
the Utopian character of this book is concerned, it contains some
things that are of value on the land question. There is a great
amount of speculation, much of which is extremely interesting and
3K
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BOOK REVIEWS 5W
suggestive on advanced methods of agriculture. So far as the story 1*
concerned, it is hut a framework on which to hang the philosophy,
save that there are a few well-wrought-out incidents. Whether the
suggestions as to the means of securing the Utopia described are to
be taken seriously or not we do not know, but if they are so intended
It argues a grlevious Ignorance of social laws and development on the
part of the writer.
Books received too late for review in this issue:
The Philippines, the War and the People. Albert G. Robinson.
McClure, Philips & Co. Cloth, 405 pp.
The Trust Problem. Jeremiah W. Jenks. McClure, Philips & Co.
Cloth, 279 pp., $1.00.
The Communist Manifesto. Marx & Engels. New edition issued by
the International Publishing Co., San Francisco. Paper, 48 pp., 10
cents.
The Awakening of the Bast Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. McClure, Phil-
ips & Co. Cloth, 298 pp., $1.50.
AMONG THE PERIODICALS
The World's Work for January is a perfect store-house of informa-
tion for the student of modern capitalism. "Great Tasks and the New
Century." by J- D« Whelpley and R. R. Wilson is an exhaustive and
interesting summary of the work which must be done to open up the
highways of commerce demanded by the larger world life of today,
and its reading will satisfy anyone that there is ample scope for all
the capital that will be exploited from the workers for some years to
come. "Among the World's Workers" tells of the greatly increasing
foreign trade of America, the opening of new methods of transporta-
tion, the relation of America to the Oriental trade and the develop-
ment of the "New South."
The International Monthly has an extremely valuable article on
"England at the Close of the Nineteenth Century," by Emil Reinsck. It
is largely based upon what has been called the "physiographic con-
ception of society," which finds an explanation of social phenomena
in geographic and climatic conditions and hence is in accord with,
and supplementary to the "economic interpretation of history," upon
which the philosophy of socialism is based.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
*
EDITORIAL
$
FINANCIAL NOTES
The American public has become accustomed to sudden and gigantic
combinations of capital, but the events of the last month have been
of such a character as to attract widespread attention even in the
home of the trust. As socialists have been freely predicting, no soon-
er were the small firms competed out of existence than steps were
taken to solidify all Industry across trade lines. Capital today seeks
only profits, is purely impersonal and cosmopolitan and knows no
trade nor national lines. So it has come about that by a mere shift-
ing of stock,- more far-reaching and significant consolidations of in-
dustry has been brought about during the past month than in any
previous year. We are now advancing with mighty strides toward a
time not far away when one enormous syndicate shall control the en-
tire American industrial situation. Indeed we are not far from that
point today as it is doubtful if any great industrial change could be
brought about without the consent of the Morgan, Yanderbilt, Rocke-
feller clique of closely united financiers.
The center around which this "trust of trusts" is crystallizing is
the great railroad combine. Taken as a whole this is by far the
mightiest aggregation of capital this planet has ever known. Indeed
no other time nor place could have furnished the necessary conditions
for its appearance. The mileage that is already definitely included
within this single combination exceeds 76,000, or more than the total
railway mileage of any other nation. But this is but a small portion
of the total possessions of this syndicate. These roads embrace all
those systems that control the anthracite coal situation and the own-
ership of the mines is vested in these carrying systems. It will be pos-
sible for a traveler to start at Southampton and travel across the At-
lantic to New York, cross the continent to Portland, Oregon, and tak-
ing passage on a 22,000-ton steamer land in Yokohoma without ever
leaving the property of this gigantic combination of capital. The
financial review in the Chicago Record (one of the most conservative
papers in the country), for Dec. 31st, says of this consolidation:
'The interlacing of dominant financial interests throughout the rail-
way network goes far to insure such community of policy and sucb
610
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EDITORIAL 511
a uniformity of practice as was never before deemed possible. The
several units of the railway organism will maintain their identity as
now, but the executive voice of each will be heard in the affairs of
the rest, and the interests of each will be assimilated with the inter-
ests of all to a degree hitherto thought too Utopian for this world.
There will remain Vanderbilt, Gould, Harriman and Hill chains and
systems, but a common executive genius will henceforward assist in
directing them for the good of each and for the good of all.
"The manipulation of the many varied factors whereby this far-
reaching design has been furthered has been of a like masterful char-
acter. It really seems as if the whole scheme had been elaborated in
the brains of a few men two years ago and patiently worked step by
step toward a stage where its realization depended only on one polit-
ical chance— the election of McKinley. The money market has been
managed adroitly, the public has been artfully enthused, the inter-
national bookkeeping has been nicely managed and every passing con-
dition has been availed of to gain the one great end— harmony."
In the midst of such movements as this the organization of an In-
ternational Wire Trust, which took place during the past months and
which one year ago would have occupied columns in the daily press,
is scarcely noticed. There have been rumors of all kinds afloat con-
cerning the further and complete consolidation of the steel and iron
interests. It is reported that Carnegie and Rockefeller are about to
lock horns in a titanic combat for mastery and some idea of the size
of the contending parties is furnished by the statement that the former
is reported to be prepared to invest $300,000,000 in such a combat,
while the Rockefeller strength is said to exceed a full billion of dol-
lars. Some conception of the prizes won by the successful ones in
these struggles may be gained from the fact that it has been estimated
that twenty-three men added almost $300,000,000 to their combined
fortunes during the year just passed.
With such industrial organizations the invasion of foreign markets
goes on at a rapid rate and simultaneous complaints of deadly Amer-
ican competition come simultaneously from Switzerland, Austria, Ger-
many and England, where native industries are being crushed out.
So it comes about that while the financial journals of America are re-
joicing over the fact that American exports for 1900 for the first time
in the history of the country were greater than those of any other
nation and that New York bank exchanges have repeatedly broken
all previous records, the London and Berlin commercial papers are
predicting an early and severe crisis for their respective countries.
Prices and wages have remained fairly stationary save that the ap-
proach of winter increases the amount of unemployment and the cost
of living and hence the amount of suffering among the laboring popu-
lation. An interesting item in this connection is seen in the recent
statement from the national mint that it was unable to supply the
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51S INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
demand for pennies. The student of social conditions sees in this one
of the well-recognized signs of increased economy among the produc-
ing classes. In every country the closer exploitation of the laborers
has been marked by an increased use of coins of the smallest denom-
ination and the present situation in the United States offers a striking
contrast with the time remembered by many a frontiersman when
the five-cent piece was the smallest coin in circulation, to say nothing
of the "flush times" in California when nothing less than a dollar was
recognized as constituting a medium of exchange.
The January number of 4i The World's Work" points out that there
has been an extensive shifting in recent years of the commercial in-
terests of the United States toward the So.uth and the far West The
first of these is much the more important at present, although the rise
of the Oriental trade may later bring the Pacific coast into the fore-
most place. The cotton-crop of 1900, although not as large as some
of those in former years, brought the hitherto unheard of price of
$500,000,000. This was owing to the fact that the demand in the
southern cotton mills was sufficient to fix the price against the foreign
and New England buyer. The owners of the inhumanly exploited wage
slaves of Alabama and Georgia were able to go into the market and
raise the price from five and six cents last year to seven and eight
this.
We must again call attention to the fact that every number of this
Review is copyrighted as a protection to our contributors, and that we
cannot permit any infraction of that copyright without credit. We are
willing at any time that anything appearing in the editorial departments
shall be reprinted by any publication provided credit is given; but we
must insist upon this credit to preserve the legality of the copyright,
especially where, as in recent oases, several whole pages are oopied ver-
batim with no reference to the original source.
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TH2 INTERNATIONAL
SOCIALIST REVIEW
Vol. I MARCH, xgoi No. 9
Weissmannism and Its Relation to Socialism
N 1883 the biological theories of August Weissmann
split the camp of evolutionary science in twain, and
for the following thirteen years the factions waged a
merry war which was somewhat felicitously dubbed
'Battle of the Darwinians." The controversy was
carried on in the leading scientific journals of the world, and
was not altogether conducted in the calm, passionless manner
to be expected of the votaries of immutable law. The warring
scientists splashed like irate cuttle-fish in clouds of their own
ink. They were sometimes unscientifically impolite, and occa-
sionally sarcastic and unkind; but when the pother was over,
and the muddy waters had cleared, it was seen that Weissmann
and his theories were still very much to the fore. About 1896
a halt was called. The reading public was beginning to tire
of the arguments, and editors were frowning upon further con-
tributions to biological lore, wherefore the scientists retired to
their laboratories and prepared to win by experiment the battles
denied to their logic. Since that time, some progress has been
made toward the settlement of the question and much light has
been thrown upon the method of evolution. Weissmann has
come out of the fight with flying colors, and though some slight
modifications have been made upon his general theory, the
underlying principle is almost universally conceded by biolog-
ical experts, and his researches have had a most stimulating
effect upon evolutionary science.
The question at issue between the Darwinians is : What are
th* factors of evolution? What are the processes which have
caused the differentiation of life? What is it that has devel-
oped simple protoplasm here into a pansy, there into a palm ;
here into a minute infusorium swimming in the water, there
518
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014 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
into a gigantic elephant crashing through the. jungle? To
what, in fact, is due the origin of species ?
The older school of evolutionists are termed the Neo-La
Markians because they hold partly to the theories of devel-
opment first propounded by La Mark. The factors of evolu-
tion discovered by him are : (i) The effects of use and disuse,
on parts and organs; and (2) the influence of environment in
bringing about changes in an organism. All changes so ac-
quired were supposed to be transmitted to offspring, for La
Mark's fourth law of development reads: "All that has been
acquired, begun, or changed in the structure of the individuals
in their lifetime, is preserved in reproduction and transmitted
to the new individuals which spring from those who have in-
herited the change." To these two laws of development the
Neo-Lamarkians have added what are termed the Darwinian
factors of evolution: Natural selection, and sexual selection;
but these they assign a secondary place in the production of
species.
In 1883, Weissmann published an essay on heredity in which
he vigorously attacked current doctrines. He denied that spe-
cies have arisen by the accumulation of acquired characters
transmitted from one generation to another, and positively as-
serted that the Darwinian factors of evolution were sole and
sufficient causes of the origin of species. Here then is found
the fundamental difference between the two schools. One is
a theory of direct descent, the other a theory of fortuitous
^descent. One asserts that species were produced by the trans-
mission and accumulation of acquired characters; the other
that they arose by the selection of types possessing favorable
variation. On these lines the battle was fought, and the in-
heritance of acquired characters is the moot point around which
raged the fiercest of the fight.
It will be well, before examining the claims of the contending
factions, to specifically define an acquired character, and this
can be best done by illustration. If, on coming of age, a young
man receives from the estate of a dead parent one thousand dol-
lars — that is inheritance. If at his death he bequeaths to his
son one thousand dollars — that is still inheritance. But if, dur-
ing his lifetime, he acquires an additional five hundred dollars f
and leaves fifteen hundred dollars to his son — the extra five
hundred may be termed an acquired character of a financial
nature. Putting this illustration into biological terms it reads
as follows: If a man inherits a certain constitution — that is
heredity. If he hands down the same constitution to his off-
spring — that is still heredity. But if, during their lives they
acquire certain peculiarities of mental or physical structure
and hand down those to descendants — that would be the trans-
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IVEISSMANNISM AND ITS RELATION TO SOCIALISM 5Ifr
mission of acquired characters. And it is in this manner that
the Neo-Lamarkians believe species originated. Use and dis-
use enlarged or diminished parts or organs; the environment
forced new characters upon organisms; all variations so pro-
duced were transmitted to offspring, and by the accumulation
of such characters, species arose.
This theory Weissmann utterly denies, and in 1884 he pub-
lished an essay entitled the "Continuity of the Germplasm" in
which he set forth his own theory. Briefly outlined, its leading
features are as follows: The germ cell, from which all multi-
cellar organisms develop, is early changed by a process of cell
division into two different kinds of cells — somatic cells, fron*
which by further division the body of the organism is built up r
and germ cells, from which at some future time will come the
offspring of the matured organism. Thus at the beginning of
the process, a bit of the germinal substance from which the
parent cell is derived is set aside to form the basis of future'
reproduction. This bit of germ plasm is the bearer of heredity,
and descends generation after generation, continuous and with-
out change. Now as all the possibilities of the future animal
are wrapped up within the germ, it necessarily follows that if
acquired characters are to be inherited, the substance of which
it is composed must undergo some slight change. This, at any^
rate, must be true, but its admittance places the Lamarkians
in a very difficult position. It so happens that the germ cell*
of any animal are separated from environing agencies by a
multitude of body cells which effectually guard it from the
impact of external forces, and as yet no machinery has been
found by which changes initiated on external surfaces may be
communicated to the germ.
The known facts of heredity very much favor this theory of
the continuity of the germ plasm. Some species have existed
and reproduced themselves since the beginning of time without
altering their characteristics, and this could not have happened
unless the germ plasm was an extremely stable substance. Ten
thousand years ago, the Egyptian sculptor wrought on the
walls of his cave the semblance of animals which browse around*
its mouth to-day ; and in the Silurian rock are found the coun-
terpart of living creatures. When it is remembered that a lit-
tle germ, sometimes not more than the one-millionth of an inch
in diameter, passes through all the complex processes of cell
division, adding cell to cell in such definite ways that a specific
structure inevitably results; and that the descendants of this
creature continue this process generation after generation
through untold ages, the conclusion that the germ plasm must
be almost unalterable becomes almost irresistible.
Weissmann's theories found many able critics. Chief of
whom, and naturally so, was Mr. Herbert Spencer. A mat*
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516 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
does not readily give credence to a philosophy which saps the
foundation of his life work, and the demonstration of Weiss-
mann's theory would certainly call for the rewriting of a large
portion of the synthetic philosophy. In several essays Mr.
Spencer brought forward cases of adaptation to environment
which, he asserted, could not be explained by the operation of
natural selection. One of the most notable instances was the
supposed degeneration of the small toe in civilized man, as a
consequence of boot pressure continued through many genera-
tions. This, it was argued, could not have benefited the indi-
vidual in the struggle for existence, and its condition could only
be explained by the theory of the inheritance of acquired char-
acters.
This argument was, however, shown to have no basis. Meas-
urements of the feet of savages who wear no shoes, and whose
ancestors never wore shoes, showed the same difference in the
size of the first and fifth toes. Then again any person who
will take the trouble to stand erect with the feet placed in a
natural position, may, by throwing his weight to the right and
left, easily find the mechanical cause for the formation of the
human foot. All the weight, when standing, falls upon the
inside of the foot. Thus it came about that variations tending
to produce an arch in that portion of the foot increased the
springing power and were preserved by natural selection ; and
thus it was that variations toward a larger and more solid bone
and toe on the inner foot, were preserved by the same agency.
Another instance of the formation of a pronounced character
by variation and accumulation through descent was instanced
by Cesare Lombroso. The camel's hump, according to his
theory, is an acquired character which has been brought into
existence by the bearing of loads. His supporting arguments
are based principally upon analogy. From the fact that the
elliptical cellular structure of the hump-backed camel is the
same as that of the smooth-backed llama, he draws the con-
clusion that camels are true llamas and were once humpless;
and on the fact that Cairo porters become slightly humped from
the bearing of loads he builds the assumption that humps may
be acquired. These two principal arguments were bolstered
up with a little information concerning the callouses which form
on the hips of Hottentot women, who habitually carry their
children pick-a-back, and then the question was put. The camel
is a llama, llamas have no hump; porters gain humps by the
carrying of loads, and Hottentot women get callouses in the
same way ; consequently the camel acquired his hump. Unfor-
tunately for the continued existence of this ingenious argument,
the geological record of the camel is, perhaps, the most com-
plete and goes the farthest back of all mammalia. The testi-
mony of the rocks proves conclusively that the humped camel
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WEISSMANNISM AND ITS RELATION TO SOCIALISM 517
antedates man, and it is hardly to be supposed that in the
ancient times, when according to Lombroso the camel was
a smooth-backed llama, he commenced to cultivate a hump by
placing loads upon his own back.
Then according to Lombroso's own statement, the humps
of the camels of to-day are no larger than those depicted in the
cave, sculptures of Egypt, and surely, if there were anything in
his argument ten thousand years of burden bearing ought to
have resulted in the development of a slightly larger hump.
On the other hand much evidence can be adduced against
the inheritance of acquired characters. If they are transmitted,
surely language, which has been practiced by man for thou-
sands of years, ought to be handed down, yet the fact remains
that every infant has to acquire the faculty of speech for itself.
And more than one experiment goes to show that when lan-
guage and education are withheld during early youth, the nor-
mal endowments are as idiotic as though these characters had
never been possessed by parents. Then again the Jews have
practiced circumcision for three thousand years without acquir-
ing a desired character ; and though the Chinese have crippled
the feet of their women for a much longer period, their female
children are still born into the world with normal feet.
On the other hand, the Darwinian factors of evolution, natur-
al selection and sexual selection, afford a reasonable explana-
tion for the presence of the great majority of existing charac-
ters. Animals which reproduce sexually, mix, at every mating,
the separate and distinct individualities of two creatures ; and
as the conditions which determine the development of the germ
may favor the molecules derived from one parent more than
those of the other, variation is bound to result. Variations pro-
duced in this manner will, if of such a nature as to aid the ani-
mal in the struggle for existence, be seized upon and preserved
by natural selection. As these variations originate in the germ
plasm, they will be transmitted to offspring, and by their accu-
mulation, generation after generation, types and species arise.
It remains to notice some of the later criticisms of Weiss-
mann's theories. It was pointed out that natural selection alone
was not sufficient to produce species. If, for instance, a single
favorable variation occurred in an individual, it must immedi-
ately be swamped by cross-breeding and could be of no advan-
tage to the race. Actual observation and experiment with wild
animals, however, furnished an answer to the objection. It is
now known that variations, instead of being exceptional, occur
in immense numbers ; that in fact, variation is the rule. Obser-
vation disclosed the fact that natural selection acts principally
upon averages. If, during a time of famine, a longer beak
assists a bird to procure food, the birds with longer beaks would
naturally survive. But it is not at all likely that all the short-
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618 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
beaked birds would perish. After the famine was over they
would breed indiscriminately as before, but the average length
of beak of the next generation would fall below that of their
parents, but would exceed that of the generation of their grand-
parents. It is thus seen that in general, natural selection oper-
ates on averages grouped around a mean.
The answering of this objection opened up another. If the
law works upon averages, and not upon individual variations, it
could only advance the race as a whole. There would be no
gaps, in fact no species. A reasonable solution of this difficulty
was found in the phenomena of isolation, segregation, sterility
and organic selection. Wherever geographical divisions iso-
lated parts of a race, divergence would be bound to appear.
The fact that natural selection works upon averages alone
would produce it. Unequal numbers would produce unequal
averages, and natural selection working upon unequal averages
would select unequal characters. And then special characters
would assuredly arise in the two groups and there would be
no opportunity to swamp them by cross-breeding. The phe-
nomena of segregation are allied to those of isolation. Wher-
ever a species covers wide territory, it will necessarily be more
populous within certain limits. There is no geographical de-
markation, but abundance of food in one place, and scarcity in
another, will draw the population to centers. Breeding will
then take place toward centers. Unequal averages will result,
and new types originate. The factor of sterility would mate-
rially aid such a process. Some animals possessing certain vari-
ations may be fertile when bred to others possessing the same
characters, but unfertile to other members of the same species.
Observation has shown this to be of constant occurrence, and it
forms another method by which the differentiation of species
may be accomplished.
Last of all comes the factor of organic selection with a rea-
sonable explanation of the formation of correlative characters.
Until the egg from which an animal develops is fertilized, all
variations which arise from changes in the germ are congenital.
But after fertilization the animal is potentially complete. It has
received all its heredity, and all further variations must be
acquired. Now we know that the Lamarkian factor of use and
disuse is a powerful agent in the production of temporary char-
acters. When therefore a congenital variation like, say, the
sudden enlargement of a stag's horn calls for a more massive
supporting neck, the factor of use provides a temporary one.
This is renewed at the birth of each generation, until among the
immense number of congenital variations, one occurs in the
direction of a thicker neck. This is at once seized upon by
natural selection and enters into the heredity of the race.
The factors thus enumerated afford a reasonable explana-
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WEISSMANNISM AND ITS RELATION TO SOCIALISM 519
tion of the origin of species, and the summary as here given
covers broadly the Weissmann theory and the modifications
which it has undergone up to the present time. And though,
through the limitations of the instruments of investigation,
some of Weissmann's philosophical conclusions may be incapa-
ble of proof, yet his investigations have wonderfully aided the
progress of evolutionary science, and furnish a simple and cred-
ible theory of heredity.
It is hardly likely that, when elaborating his theory of the
continuity of the germ plasm, Dr. Weissmann knew that he
was laying a biological foundation for the economic science of
the socialist school of philosophy. But, whether he knew it or
not, that is exactly what he did ! "If Weissmann's theory be
true," says Dr. Starr-Jordan, "the whole literature of sociology
will have to be rewritten!" And another writer said that
Weissmann reopened the case for socialism. There is an exact
identity of opinion between Weissmann and the socialist writers
concerning the influence of environing forces upon man. The
socialist teaching might be condensed in the phrase : "Man is
the product of heredity and environment, and heredity is the
summing-up of past environments" ; and this is the Weissmann
theory in a nutshell. According to it, the racial characteristics,
the fixed characters which stamp this creature as a man, that
as a monkey, alone are handed down. All the arts and graces,
the virtues and vices, the elegancies and gaucheries, exhibited
by different men and women, being temporary characters forced
upon them by surrounding conditions. Natural selection pre j
served first the physically strong, and then the mentally strong.
Each child commences its education at exactly the same place
as its grandfather commenced his, but with a larger capacity
for acquiring knowledge and a larger stock of knowledge to
acquire from.
The old theories of heredity, however, do not and cannot be
made to agree with the socialist philosophy. Their exponents
agree that acquired characters are inherited, and that after they
have been transmitted through a certain number of generations
they become fixed and enter into the heredity of the animal.
If this were true the habits of a man forced by hard conditions
into the slums would be transmitted to his children ; and if they
continued to live in the slums the habits would become fixed
and enter into their heredity. Such people would then be con-
genially bad, and though removed from the evil environment,
would continue in their evil ways.
"Now," says the critic of socialism, "you socialists propose
to establish and operate an industrial system based on co-oper-
ation ; and this you propose to do by the help of a class of peo-
ple which is made up of hereditary inefficients, and the least
intelligent members of society. You are attempting the impos-
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6*0 INTERNA TTONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
sible. These people have a strain of criminal or inefficient
heredity. Natural selection has graded society from top to
bottom, and they are where they are, because of what they
are. And were you to succeed in establishing such a society it
must inevitably go to pieces, the inefficiency of its units insur-
ing its early death."
To criticism of this kind, the Weissmann theory furnishes a
ready answer. If the racial characteristics are alone trans-
mitted to offspring, it naturally follows that the great majority
of the people can in one generation be raised to a higher men-
tal and physical plane — to a degree of intelligence and useful^
ness required for the operation of a co-operative society. And
though it is true we have congenital defectives amongst us, and
hereditarily inefficient people, they are few in comparison to the
number of unfortunates who have been dragged down by hard
conditions. Natural selection is operative everywhere, and in
the slums the criminal is the most favored in the struggle for
existence. Normal persons, driven to the slums, are slowly
exterminated and the beggar and the thief survive to reproduce
their kind. But under proper conditions the great majority of
the slum people could be made into good and useful citizens.
This conclusion is borne out by the investigations of Profes-
sor John R. Commons, late of Syracuse University. In treating
the subject he used three methods of investigation, and the
compared results show: that 1.75 per cent of the population of
the United States are congenital defectives ; that 3.25 per cent
are induced defectives, that is those who have not inherited
their inefficiency; that 2 per cent are possessed of genius and
will make their way in spite of the hardest conditions ; that 2
per cent are below the average Aryan brain level ; and that the
remaining 91 per cent are normal persons who are neither good
nor bad, brilliant nor stupid, criminal nor virtuous, and whose
future is entirely decided by the environment which surrounds
them during the first fifteen years of life.
Professor Commons maintains that the majority of the den-
izens of the slums can be saved by proper treatment. Elmira
Reformatory saves 30 per cent of its charges, and home placing
institutions save nearly all. This statement coincides with the
experience of the writer. During a period of eight years, some
two thousand boys on the farm colony of Dr. Barnardo, in the
Province of Manitoba, passed under his observation. They,
were all taken from the London slums, and most of them had
served terms in jail; yet not more than 1 per cent reverted
to their former habits. They were not expert farmers, and it
could not be expected, yet this may be said for them : they were
more efficient than the scions of the English aristocracy who
were living in Manitoba on keep-away allowances.
It would not be difficult to collect facts of the above kind
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1VEISSMANNISM AND ITS RELATION TO SOCIALISM «21
sufficient to fill a work as voluminous as the Encyclopaedia
Brittanica, but it is not necessary. They are the commonplaces
of every-day life. Men are made by conditions. Not one man
in one million is indifferent to the opinion of the society in
which he lives, or greater than his opportunities. He is born,
he lives, he dies; and from the cradle to. the grave his life is
one long chapter of accidents. Is he born in the slums ? A thief
he will surely be, unless some unforeseen contingency arises
to thrust him forth into more favorable surroundings. A hun-
dred thousand slum children will be born in London the present
year. Dr. Barnardo, a great and beneficent accident, will turn
the current of a thousand lives into decent channels ; the Lon-
don police, stern and forbidding as the hand of fate, will direct
the remaining ninety-nine thousand to' the jail and gallows. It
will be well, then, considering that environment plays such an
important part in the making and marring of men, to carefully
examine the claims of a reasonable theory of heredity, which
promises much for the immediate advancement of mankind.
The great distinction between the new and old theories of
heredity, and the one which, therefore, appeals to the socialist
lies in this : Weissmann holds out more hope for the present
generation. He tells us that the great majority of men are
pretty much the same; but the old doctrine of heredity says
that we are widely different, and that the differences are getting
wider. One theory teaches that men instantly respond to the
stimulus of good conditions, the other that bad habits con-
tracted during evil times will persist though earth become
a heaven. The one theory tends to raise, the other to lower.
A few words on the action of natural selection in modern
society will form a fitting conclusion. The old struggle, which
secured the survival of the physically fit, has been replaced by
a form of social selection which is partly natural and partly
artificial. This process may be divided into direct and indirect
social selection. All the conscious efforts of man to apply
within society the principle he has observed at work without
constitute direct social selection. The segregation of the men-
tally, morally and physically unfit, in lunatic asylums, prisons
and hospitals and the association of charitable societies to de-
feat the aims of the unworthy, are measures of direct social
selection. So far the principle has been applied in a purblind,
groping sort of a way, and the work accomplished is small in
comparison to that which remains to do. The task is too great
for the individual. Prisons and hospitals merely deal with the
effects of disease, and leave unchecked the sources from which
they spring. Present methods of dealing with criminals are
inadequate, antiquated and unjust. The innocent victims of
a perverse economic system who have been driven to the slums
by hard conditions, receive exactly the same treatment as the
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5M INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
congenitally bad. The out-of-work is punished with the tramp ;
and so long as these evils can be charged to heredity, just so
long will the people be blind to the share chargeable to public
injustice.
Under indirect social selection may be grouped all the blind
automatic forces which are at work within a. society. Under
existing conditions, the political, industrial and social institu-
tions of a society affect the personality, and mold the character
of its units without regard to that which is fair or fit. The
laws of property, for instance, so favor the landlord that an un-
favorable environment is often forced upon the workers. Great
rookeries are packed with human beings in order that one or
two men may reap enormous ground rents ; filthy Orientals are
crowded into a congested district and menace the health of an
entire community, and prominent members of a society derive
large incomes from the renting of streets of brothels. Long
hours of work, low pay and irregular employment are all forms
of indirect social selection and it cannot be said of them, nor of
the profit-making saloon, that they tend to produce a higher
type of man. Social selection as it exists to-day will have to
give place to a higher form if the twentieth century is to fulfil
its promise.
The injurious forms of social selection here treated are sur-
vivals from a lower society and have no warrant in reason for
their . continued existence. In primitive times man had little
or no control over the forces which acted upon him. There
was no social selection, for there was no society worthy of the
name. But when family groups massed into tribes, and tribes
into nations, and a highly complex social organism evolved,
man gained the power of partially molding environment to
his will. Every step in the organization of society increased
this power; and in the modern state, the process of organiza-
tion and differentiation is almost complete. Industry is organ-
ized on a vast scale. Enormous aggregations of capital control
enterprises of international importance, and millions of laborers
band together to protect their interests and secure better con-
ditions.
This organization of economic power has made possible the
complete control of the systems of production and distribution.
Waste labor is rapidly being eliminated from the business of
production. But if this labor is to be utilized, instead of be-
coming a menace to society, it is absolutely necessary that the
systems of production and distribution shall be brought into
harmony. And when this final triumph of social organization
shall have been accomplished, new forms of direct social selec-
tion will replace the old injurious, indirect selection. With free-
dom, security in the means of livelihood, and equal opportunity,
the premium of brute force and cunning will be withdrawn and
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WEISSMANNISM AND ITS RELATION TO SOCIALISM 588
the human personality will work out its own survival. Person-
ality will become a keen selective principle, based not on over-
population and competition, but on the self-destruction which
comes from drunkenness and disease ; whose degraded offspring
will perish, or feed the ranks of the degenerates to be properly
segregated and ended.
With education and opportunity, higher forms of human
character will increase and survive, and with the independence
and freedom of women, sexual selection will become a refined
and powerful agent of progress. The blind god of chance will
be dethroned, and a conscious humane social selection, inflex-
ible in decree but gentle in methods, replace the present im-
perfect process, and the individual struggle of man and man will
be transformed into a collective struggle against the forces of
nature.
Herman Whittaker.
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Municipal Socialism*
N
HAT should be the nature of the fight in which the
socialists will be engaged for the purpose of gaining
control of the municipal powers?
Once this control is secured, what use will the
candidates elected make of their powers?
These are the two questions corresponding to the two phases
of the fight that is waged wherever international socialism
undertakes to conquer the political powers. Shall we give
the campaign a simple progressive, radical or democratic tinge,
only more progressive, radical or democratic than that of our
adversaries ? Or will it be more advisable to show in this fight,
as in all others, that the collectivist socialist party is essentially
different from other political parties in that the immediate
reforms demanded by us are only the first stones of an im-
mense structure, connected as they are with the grand idea
of a new social structure?
The answer, it seems to me, is not doubtful. The more we
can prove our practical ability in realizing reforms in the order
of their evolution, the more we must show the revolutionary
character of our tendencies and conceptions, and above all we
must take care that the working class does not make any mis-
takes in this matter.
As these fights offer the best opportunity to spread our doc-
trines, would it not be a great mistake not to proclaim the
latter in a definite manner showing their whole wide scope ? A
mistake, not to show that our fight is a class-struggle, and that
the reforms realized by us in the municipalities are far from
giving us the final victory? This has been expressed with the
following words in the eighth resolution of the International
Congress, held in Paris last summer:
"Seeing that the term "Municipal Socialism" does not sig-
nify a special kind of socialism but simply the application of
the general principles of socialism to a particular department
of political activity ;
"And seeing that the reforms connected therewith are not
and cannot be put forward as the realization of the collectivist
state, but that they are put forward as playing a part in a sphere
of action which socialists can and should seize upon in order to
prepare and facilitate the coming of the collectivist state;
"And seeing that the municipality can become an excellent
•It must be remembered that this article is intended as a plan of action for socialist
municipalities after Ruch have been elected, and not a series of "demands" to be made of
capitalist municipalities. — T£d.
5*4
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MUNICIPAL SOCIALISM 525
laboratory of local economic activity and at the same time a
formidable political fortress for the use of local socialist major-
ities against the middle-class majority of the central authority,
when once substantial local powers have been obtained;
"The Congress declares:
"That it is the duty of all socialists, without misunderstand-
ing the importance of the wider political issues, to make clear
to all the value of municipal activity, to recognize in all munic-
ipal reforms the importance which attaches to them as "em-
bryos of the collectivist state," and to endeavor to municipalize
such public services as the urban transport service, education,
shops, bakeries, medical assistance, hospitals, water supply,
baths and wash-houses, the food supply and clothing, dwell-
ings for the people, the supply of motive power, public works,
the police force, etc., etc., to see that these public services shall
be model services as much from the point of view of the inter-
ests of the community as from that of the citizens who serve it ;
"That the local bodies which are not large enough to under-
take themselves any of these reforms should federate with one
another for such purposes;
"That in a country where the political system does not allow
municipalities to adopt this course, it is the duty of all socW-
ist elected persons to endeavor to obtain for municipal bodws
sufficient liberty and independence to obtain these reforms ;
"The Congress further decides that the time has come to
convene an International Congress of socialist municipal coun-
cilors.
"Such a congress should have a double purpose:
"(a) To make publicly known what reforms have been se-
cured in the department of municipal administration and what
moral and financial advantages have resulted.
(b) To establish a national bureau in each country and an
international bureau, entrusted with the task of collecting all
the information and documents relating to municipal life, so
as to facilitate the study of municipal questions.
"The Congress also decides that the business of convening
the Socialist Municipal Congress shall be left in the hands of
the permanent international bureau appointed September 25,
1900."
But once our candidates are in power, what will be their
policy
In the first place and always as we have already indicated—
to show in all the projects, in all the reforms what distinguishes
the socialist solution from other solutions; to submit to the
municipal council such questions of general interest as must
attract the v public attention.
As to the reforms themselves, they are innumerable and of
very diverse kinds. There are such, and they are numerous,
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62* INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
as are found in the platforms of the old parties, but have not
been introduced by them at all or only imperfectly; for in-
stance :
Education: Scientific instruction for all grades free of charge
(the only condition for admission to higher classes being fit-
ness) ; physical maintenance of the children that attend school
(meals, clothing); professional schools — libraries and lecturing
halls — museums, scientific and art collections, theatres and
concerts. Special attention must be given to the care of or-
phans.
Public Charities: Admission of laborers to their administra-
tion; transformation of charity into mutual benefits and above
;all insurance where feasible — lodging houses — labor bureaus.
Hygiene: Public baths, wash-houses, public closets, parks,
•control of alimentary commodities, laboratories for chemical
and bacteriological analyses, municipal drug stores, street
cleaning, sprinkling, sewers, etc.
There are, furthermore, certain reforms to which the old par-
ties offer more or less resistance in different countries.
Labor Regulations: Minimum wages, maximum hours of
labor, insurance for all laborers employed for or by the munic-
ipality; intervention of trade unions for the purpose of realiz-
ing these conditions.
Finances: Taxation of revenue; during transition securing
of funds by exploitation of franchises.
There are, besides, a number of reforms giving industrial
functions to the municipalities and thus replacing private en-
terprise. These constitute a step toward the expropriation of
the capitalist class. True, the field where it can continue its
parasitism is still very large, but a beginning must be made in
everything.
The avenues of transportation (roads, canals, rivers, bridges,
ports, landings) have not always belonged to the communities.
To-day we want to bring the means of transportation (rail-
roads, tramways, telegraphs and telephones) under their con-
trol.
The markets, the slaughter houses, are becoming more and
more municipal property.
The lighting of public and private places (by gas and elec-
tricity) passes from the hands of joint stock companies into
those of the municipalities.
The distribution of water becomes a municipal service.
Numerous municipalities have built homes for laborers, but
hitherto this was due mainly to sanitary or charitable motives.
We should, therefore, extend our activity in that direction and
establish a public building service for the accommodation of
others besides laboring men; so that the municipality absorbs
the capitalistic rent which it could abolish later on.
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MUNICIPAL SOCIALISM 527
Restaurants have also been opened for the purpose of char-
ity, and on account of this characteristic the laborers often
did not derive any benefit from such institutions, because their
self-respect was wounded. It would be important to develop
this service, but at the same time giving it another character.
In those countries where alcohol is not a monopoly for the
benefit of the state, it has been suggested that the municipali-
ties monopolize its sale. In England some municipalities have
demanded permission to open grocery stores. In Glasgow the
municipalization of the milk trade has been proposed.
Another important department is that of insurance, especially
that against fire. Such departments have existed for a long
time in Germany and Switzerland.
Still another field of activity in which the municipalities could
nowadays replace private societies is that of the banking ser-
vice. In Russia there are about two hundred and fifty towns
that have municipal banks. The question is being studied in
Glasgow. Here we have to indicate a very important matter
to those who might be tempted to introduce this reform. In
order to break with capitalist precedent and to suppress the
parasitism of money, they should establish in their banks the
true system of the future : Ametalism, that is the suppression
of metallic money, for which they should substitute account
money, representative of exchanged commodities.*
In regard to those services that can yield a benefit to the
town, should the latter turn the realized benefits into the munic-
ipal treasury, where they would add to the income of taxation,
or should the town trade at the price of production without
making any profits ?
In view of the difficulties nearly everywhere obstructing the
establishment of an equitable system of taxation at the present
time, it seems to be sufficiently legitimate for the municipali-
ties to replace private industry and to realize for the benefit of
the community all or a part of the profits that were produced
for the benefit of a few individuals.
But it is essential that from now on the evident abuse prac-
ticed in certain towns be stopped, where the public services,
such as water for irrigation, fire departments, etc., gas or elec-
tric light for streets or public buildings, are supported solely
by the consumers of the water, the gas and the electricity.
Not alone that the municipality makes profits on its private
consumers, it also forces them to pay all the expenses of the
public necessities.
The remedy lies in administering the public services in an
* Thoee who wish to study this interesting question should read the works of M. Solvay
on social accounts (Oomptabilisme social) published in the Annates de PInUUui da*
fibtoneat SbckOes, Brussels, Hotel Ravenstein, Secretary E. VI nek; also the fine book of
Alfred de Westrup: "The New Philosophy of Money/* Minneapolis, Leonard, publisher, 1805.
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528 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
autonomous fashion. Every service must consider the others
as customers with whom it has to open accounts. The public
ways, the fire department, the public buildings, will pay for their
water and their gas like a private person and these expenses
will be charged to the account of the general budget.
One more department remains to be indicated, one of the
most interesting — the Works Department — such as the London
City Council has established. For several years this has been
its own architect and its own contractor. But the interesting
feature about it is that the Works Department maintains to the
other services, for which it has some work to execute, the re-
lation of a third party, like any contractor. The work is pub-
licly offered to the highest bidder and the contractors may
compete with the Works Department. It is generally the lat-
ter that carries off the palm.
* * * * *
We believe to have thus detailed the different points of mu-
nicipal activity as we see them and understand them to-day.
Every one of these points would be worthy of special study
comprising the experiences in already realized departments;
but in order to do this it would be necessary not to write an
article of a few pages for this review, but a volume.
In conclusion we accentuate the enormous benefit that social-
ist councilors may derive from periodic meetings in sections.
These meetings are of the greatest value not alone on account
of their uniting the efforts of our candidates in the same direc-
tion, but also because they are a veritable school of mutual
education.
It must also be our endeavor to create a permanent secre-
tariat whose duty it would be to furnish to the councilors such
administrative and economic information as they may be in
need of.
Emit Vinck,
Secretary of the Federation of Communal Councilors of Belgian Socialists.
(Translated by E. Untermann.)
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Theology or Science?
UGUSTE COMTE divides the history of human de-
velopment into three periods: the theological, the
metaphysical and the positive or scientific. Whether
we fully and unqualifiedly accept his classification or
not, it pretty accurately reflects the history of philosophical
thought. The primitive belief in miracles and in the infallible
truth of the church dogmas, cast off by up-to-date theology, is
quite apt to revive in a new-born sociological doctrine, of which
the article "Evolution or Revolution ?" (m the January issue of
The International Socialist Review) furnishes a fit illustration.
That it is admirable as a Sunday sermon, to be preached from
a Christian Socialist pulpit, is beyond question; but that it is
not Marx-inspired in origin, as claimed, of this the following
passage is proof conclusive :
"Lack of education is precisely the reason why socialism i9
making slow progress, wherever it is first taught. Given a
thoroughly educated nation and we could have had socialism
long before the progress of invention and science had made
private monopoly possible. Suppose, for a moment, that the
nations of the world had had the necessary intellectual en-
lightenment at Christ's time, and socialism would have been es-
tablished then and there. Economic evolution, instead of being
the means of enriching the few at the expense of the many,
would then have resulted in shortening the hours of labor and
creating better surroundings for all. But the people were too
ignorant to grasp the import of Christ's doctrine, and the ruling
classes held them down under the iron rods of religious super-
stition and military force — as they do now, with the added force
of economic pressure^ fallacious science and a lying press."
The author of these utterances believes in all earnestness that
this is Marx's "materialist conception of history" and under-
takes to criticise the writer's paper on "Trusts and Socialism"
— "from the standpoint of a Marx socialist." It is painful at
this advanced date to debate such elementary propositions ; to
attempt it in an international socialist review would require an
apology but for the fact that they can be traced to no less
eminent a writer than Edward Bellamy. Says he in his "Equal-
ity," which can be fairly characterized as the encyclopedia of
home-made American socialism:
"Nothing, surely could be more self-evident than the strictly
Christian inspiration of the idea of this guarantee (of economic
equality). It contemplated nothing less than a liberal fulfill-
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580 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
ment on a complete social scale of Christ's inculcation that all
should feel the same solicitude and make the same efforts for
the welfare of others as for their own. The first effect of such
a solicitude must needs be to prompt effort to bring about an
equal material provision for all, as the primary condition of
welfare. One would certainly think that a nominally Christian
people having some familiarity with the New Testament would
have needed no one to tell them these things, but that they
would have recognized on its first statement that the program
of the revolutionists was simply a paraphrase of the golden
rule expressed in economic and political terms. One would
have said that whatever other members of the community might
do, the Christian believers would at once have flocked to the
support of such a movement with their whole heart, soul, mind
and might. That they were so slow to do so must be ascribed
to the wrong teaching and non-teaching of a class of persons
whose express duty above all other persons and classes was to
prompt them to that action, — namely, the Christian clergy."
(PP. 340-34I.)
Both quotations are identical in sentiment. How remote this
is from "the standpoint of a Marx socialist," I shall let another
state, who has for a score of years been recognized by the Ger-
man Social Democratic party as the official interpreter of the
Marxist doctrine, and whose opposition to Bernstein and all
his works is beyond suspicion. The following lines are from
Kautsky's chapter on "Primitive Christian communism," which
forms part of the "History of Socialism," published by author-
ity of the German Social Democratic party:
"For Christianity in its beginnings the controlling class was
the tramp-proletariat of the large cities, which had got out of
the habit of working. Producing was regarded by these ele-
ments as a fairly indifferent matter ; their prototype was the lilies
of the field which neither sow nor weave, and still thrive. If
they strove for a different distribution of property, they had in
view not the means of production, but the means of consump-
tion. .. ^Practically this kind of communism reduced itself to
this, that all means of production were to be converted into
means of consumption, and the same were to be divided among
the poor; this would mean, if universally carried out, the end
of all production. However little the first Christians, as genu-
ine beggar-philosophers, may have cared for production, a last-
ing greater society could not be built upon this foundation.
The state of production in those days required private prop-
erty in the means of production, and the Christians could not
get away from that. ' ' (a)
The belief in "absolute truth" is the fundamental character-
(a) Die Geschlcte dee Socialigmus, Vol. I., pp. 24, *6.
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THEOLOGY OR SCIENCE t 5*1
istic of every theological system. Absolute truth is not limited
by time or place ; its revelation is consequently independent of
historical conditions; its perception requires only "common
sense" and an unbiased mind. The reign of eternal "justice,"
which is but another name for absolute truth, may therefore
be inaugurated at any time and place, as soon as the light is
seen by the people. It need not wait for "the slow course of
economic evolution." A revolution may "fulfill Marx's proph-
ecy long before any one will have time to consider the question
of providing a sinking fund for the claims of capital." This is
the philosophy underlying modern communist anarchism.
After listening to the impatient appeals in behalf of the
"millions of our fellow-citizens" who "are forced to starve, to
live by stealth, to strike, to fawn, to sell themselves into bond-
age," of "children of tender years and women pregnant with
growing life," who "are forced into the ranks of wage-slaves,"
of those "whose wan faces greet the dawn of every new morn-
ing with the consciousness of another day's slaving in store
for them," of "their invalid wives and their offspring doomed
to perpetual drudgery, starvation and want," of the "invalid,
exhausted by excessive exertion in the service of soulless cor-
porations and unable to counterbalance the waste of his tissue
by regeneration of healthy molecules, for want of means of sub-
sistence" ; of the "young girl with traces of former purity and
loveliness in her face, now degraded and vulgar beyond con-
ception," of "the young toiler at the plow who is now
dwarfed and crippled physically from premature hard work be-
yond the endurance of his growing body," of the "young artist,
haggard and crushed and doubtful of his own talent, — after
reading this long list of those who cannot be "forced" to wait
for the process of gradual evolution, one is naturally prepared
to hear the bugle call, "Aux armes, citoyens!" What a dis-
appointment to discover that the latter-day Patrick Henry is
a law-abiding American citizen, who places his sole reliance in
the ballot and would shoulder his grandfather's musket only
to quell a new rebellion against Old Glory !
Now, there will be no presidential election until 1904, — can
a woman in delicate condition wait as long as that ? — and even
then a socialist is not certain to get into the White House,
since the job has been promised by Hanna to Teddy. So, the
earliest date for which an extra session of a socialist congress
may be set down by a socialist president is some time in 1909 ;
and for aught we know, it may take another term or two, per-
haps more. Will the "invalid, unable to counterbalance the
waste of his tissue by the regeneration of healthy molecules,"
live to see the happy inauguration day? What has the gospel
of law-abiding revolution for the thousands of degraded girls,
to reclaim them from their lives of shame, pending the estab-
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589 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
lishment of socialism, while they are young? "Words, nothing
but words 1"
Compare those Fourth-of-July pyrotechnics with the plain,
business-like language of the Kautsky resolution adopted at
the latest International Socialist Congress at Paris :
"In a modern democratic state the conquest of political power
cannot be accomplished at one blow, but only as a result of
slow and arduous work devoted to the economic and political
organization of the proletariat, as a result of the physical and
moral regeneration of the working class and of a gradual con-
quest of the municipalities and legislatures."
If this means anything, it means that the physical and moral
regeneration of the working class must precede the conquest of
political power by the proletariat; that is to say, that it will
advance under capitalism, apace with the gradual conquest of
the municipalities and legislatures.
Modern science has no room for miracles in human society
any more than in the physical world. The scientific merit of
Karl Marx does not consist in the invention of a panacea, of a
socialist idea of "justice," nor in that he "emphasized the
birthrights of the toiler, dwarfed and crippled physically from
premature hard work," etc., nor even in "conceiving of the
transformation of capitalistic private property as a revolution."
All that had been thoroughly done before him by the great
founders of Utopian socialism, — Babeuf, Owen, Saint Simon,
Fourier and their schools. The historical merit of Karl Marx,
which has immortalized his name, is that he has shown that cap-
italistic society is growing into socialism, whether we like it
or not, by force of economic development; that our opinions
are themselves shaped by the inevitable course of events.
"No social formation perishes before all productive forces
for which it affords sufficient room have been developed, nor
do new and higher relations of production ever come into the
world before the material conditions of their existence have
matured in the womb of old society. Therefore, mankind always
sets to itself only such problems as it is able to solve, for upon
close analysis it always appears that the problem itself is raised
only then when the material conditions requisite for its solu-
tion are already in existence, or at least in the process of in-
cipience." (a)
This is the materialistic conception of history. If this con-
ception of history is correct, a revolution cannot supply that
which could not develop without it.
We know from Marx that the dissolution of the primitive
community was the result of inter-communal relations, which
introduced exchange, first between communities, and subse-
(a) Karl Marx. Zur Krltlk der Politlschen Oekonomic. Preface.
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THEOLOGY OR SCIENCE t 588
quently within the community. The individualism of the handi-
crafts and of peasant farming, which succeeded primitive com-
munism, led to the development of division of labor within the
workshop. This brought about the beginnings of capitalism;
the invention of machinery expropriated the artisan, destroyed
home industries in the country, built up the factory system and
international capitalism. Competition between capitalists led
to centralization of capitals in a few hands. This is as far as
Marx has gone. He dwells upon the various methods of vio-
lence which attended all these social changes, yet he is clearly
of the opinion that these methods were only incidental and that
the same changes were bound to spring forth from the devel-
opment of the economic contradictions inherent in each of
those phases of social evolution. Engels, in his % ' An ti- Diihring, ' '
goes into the question at length and ridicules Diihring's "theory
of violence," which seeks the cause of social changes in acts of
brute force.
All these changes were the resultant of individual energies
directed to the satisfaction of individual ends, and quite uncon-
scious of their effects upon the fabric of society. The primitive
tribe meant only to exchange its products with its neighbors,
but did not intend to bring about the dissolution of its own
village community. The cotton manufacturer sold his goods
to make money for himself, he did not anticipate that it would
result in the downfall of peasant agriculture, less did he intend
it. The early inventor of machinery intended to save cost and
labor, but he never dreamt that the machine would expropriate
the workman and send his wife and children to the factory. As
economic conditions changed, so did economic opinions change,
usually somewhat lagging behind. And now suddenly all must
be reversed; capitalistic society cannot pass into socialism as a
result of individual activities directed towards individual ends ;
socialist ideas, it would seem, do not develop as a result of the
development of socialism in economic relations, but, on the con-
trary, socialist ideas must anticipate socialistic institutions.
Unlike all earlier forms of economic organization, socialistic
institutions must be created by the conscious will of a class,
determined that there shall be socialism. It is the old familiar
cosmogony: "In the beginning was the Word All things
were made by hifn ; and without him was not any thing made
that was made." It is evident that this story of the creation
of socialism is incompatible with the "monistic" view of philos-
ophy of history, (b)
This contradiction does not in the least detract from the
greatness of Marx; it reinforces, on the contrary, his theory
(b) The term. In its application to the theory, reducing the development of society
to one primary cause, viz: the development of the methods of production, originates from
G. Flecnanow.
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584 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
by showing that even its author, unquestionably the greatest
economic thinker of the nineteenth century, could not rise too
far above the economic conditions of his own age. To fore-
see, in the days of the "Communist Manifesto" that the course
of economic evolution irresistibly led society towards social-
ism, required a mind of a genius. But even a genius, while
grasping the tendencies of the age from a few embryonal phe-
nomena, could not supply by his imagination what had no exist-
ence in the actual economic conditions of his day. Had he
attempted to do so he would have been a Utopian, not the
founder of scientific socialism. Competition was in full bloom ;
individualism, the laissez-faire theory, was the gospel of the
bourgeoisie. There was nothing to indicate how the chasm
between the two worlds, that of Capitalism and that of Social-
ism, could be bridged over; it was the pnly natural thing for
Marx to assume that it had to be crossed by a bold leap into
the Unknown, by a revolution; it was too doubtful "that the
capitalists would part with their spoils without a struggle."
Could we, like Joshua, tell the sun to stop while we are
fighting our battle for socialism, the prophecy would be ful-
filled even as it was spoken by the prophet. But "the world do
move"; and so within the decade just past we have witnessed
the rapid growth of a middle-class movement toward municipal
socialism. This is not on the program; it fills the socialists
with anxiety lest their thunder might be stolen by intruders,
and involves them in a tangle of theoretical contradictions,
which but reflect the economic contradictions to which the de-
velopment of capitalism has given rise since Karl Marx's death.
In vain do they search his writings for ready answers to prob-
lems which had no existence in his day. Marx strictly confined
himself to outlining broad, general tendencies, leaving it to
succeeding generations to take care of the details, and to meet
new conditions as they arise. To deal with them intelligently
we must "know more than our intellectual fostering hen,
Marx." To pretend that we cannot or dare not know more
than he knew a third of a century ago, is in keeping with the
theological spirit which burned the library of Alexandria, be-
cause — said Caliph Omar — if those books contained the same
doctrine as the Koran they were "worthless," since the Koran
contains all necessary truths; but if they contained anything
contrary to the Koran, they were "criminal" and ought to be
destroyed.
The writer has attempted to define the present situation from
what he understands to be the Marxist viewpoint, in showing
that "public ownership of natural monopolies becomes the in-
stinctive platform of the small capitalist class." The writer has
further said, and he believes it will be almost universally con-
curred in, that this platform will be carried out by one of the
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THEOLOGY OR SCIENCE t 5*5
two capitalistic parties, which consequently precludes confis-*
cation. So far only two schemes have been suggested for re-
ducing "natural monopolies" to public ownership: duplication
or redemption. In either case the municipality, the state, or
the nation, must issue interest-bearing bonds, either to con-
struct competing plants, or to buy out the corporations. There
is now a plan on foot, proceeding from interested capitalistic
quarters, to nationalize the coal mines in Germany. The
scheme has been the topic of a discussion between Kautsky
and Bebel in the German party press. Kautsky, who is opposed
to the plan, takes the stand that it will increase the cost of pro-
duction by the interest on the bonds and the payments on ac-
count of the sinking fund upon an inflated capitalization; as
the state would nationalize the mines with an eye only to the
interests of the consuming public, the price of coal would likely
be reduced, and the miners would have to foot the bill. Speak-
ing for the miners, he therefore prefers a law reducing the
hours of labor and securing better inspection of the mines, and
other kindred demands of the miners. Bebel, on the contrary,
favors nationalization, even though carried out by the capital-
istic state, and bases his position upon the familiar arguments
of the advocates of municipal socialism.
Suppose public ownership should be taken up as a campaign
issue by one of the capitalistic parties in this country, Bebel's
argument would then be urged in support of that party. Would
not the labor vote be divided between the old-party candidate
and the socialist candidate? "Class-conscious proletarian"
socialist education would afford no remedy, since the leading
educators themselves disagree as to what is the class-interest
of the proletariat in the premises. The issue would be, in fact,
"proletarian class-consciousness" against "public ownership."
And that must continue so whenever it is proposed to reduce
a new private monopoly to public ownership, until the day when
the party of the "class-conscious proletariat" will obtain control
of all branches of government. To assume in the face of it
without further proof that the education of the proletariat up
to "class-consciousness" must lead to the general introduction
of public ownership, is therefore out of date.
Moreover, "class-consciousness" itself is a mere scientific
abstraction, like a mathematical lever; its only manifestation
is in the minds of individuals. It means the recognition by the
individual of the identity of his private interest with that of his
class. Such identity of interest presupposes identity of eco-
nomic condition. Is there actually such an identity of eco-
nomic condition within the proletariat to-day? The history
of the great strikes in the coal mines within the last few years
has shown how difficult it is to reconcile the interests of the
competing coal-producing fields, which enables the operators
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586 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
in some districts to play off their workmen against the union.
The frequent conflicts between unions represented in the same
central body, the failure of so many great sympathetic strikes,
are likewise evidences of the existence of heterogeneous groups
with distinct interests within the great body of wage-workers.
On the other hand, the attitude of the trust towards labor is
still an unknown quantity. That the trust has the power to
crush a union may be assumed, but has the trust the same in-
terest to haggle with labor, as the individual capitalist who is
pushed to the wall by competition? So long as the trust has
the power to raise the prices as high as ioo per cent and even
more above the competitive price, it really matters little what
wages have to be paid, the additional cost being shifted to the
consumer. It is, of course, premature to predict the possi-
bilities of this situation. We cannot overlook, however, such
significant facts as the latest movement towards combination
between trusts and trade unions in England. In substance, the
trust agrees to employ the entire membership of the union and
none but union labor, at "fair" wages, in return for which the
union agrees to supply no labor to outsiders not in the em-
ployers' trust. In the United States there is a similar agree-
ment in force between the flint glass trust and the union of
the flint glass workers.
Suppose now, a hostile trust which is a large consumer of
flint glass, is engineering a new tariff bill which will open the
market to foreign competition in that particular industry. That
the trusts are apt to fall out between themselves, is familiar
to every newspaper reader, as well as that they employ Con-
gress as a tool to further their schemes. That foreign compe-
tition would compel a reduction of the price of flint glass and
may, for a time at least, break up the trust and its combination
with the union is fairly probable. What would be the chance
of a socialist candidate for Congress, in a district where the
voters are mainly flint glass workers, between a Republican
candidate backed by one trust and a Democratic candidate
backed by the other? Would not the workers regard it as
a matter of bread and butter to vote for the candidate of the
flint glass trust, any amount of socialist discourse on the class
struggle between capital and labor notwithstanding?
This example demonstrates that "class-consciousness" is not
the product of socialist education, but must be the outcome of
economic evolution which will eliminate sectional friction within
the body of wage-workers ; and that presupposes the elimination
of antagonistic interests within the capitalist class. The pres-
ent sectional conflicts between individual capitalists or private
corporations and "their men" will develop into a "class strug-
gle" between capital and labor, only then when capital, on the
one hand, and labor, on the other, will actually become unified
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
THEOLOG Y OR SCIENCE t 537
into distinct classes, i. e., not until "the people" (the munici-
pality, the state, the nation) will assume control, partly directly,
partly indirectly, of the main lines of business. In fixing the
price of the manufactured article, the state will represent the
interests of "the public." This will create an issue directly be-
tween the class of bondholders and the class of workers, as to
what shall be the rate of wages and the hours of labor. The
scientific term "class-interest" will then acquire a concrete
meaning in every-day life.
It has been my aim to show that the full realization of social-
ism must come as the product of purely economic forces, in
spite of the inertia of the human herd. The objection that this
theory leads to oriental fatalism and quietism is by no means
a new one. The discussion of this question has filled volumes
in German, Russian and French. The answer of the advocates
of the "monistic" view is this :
All human knowledge is but the knowledge of natural pro-
cesses ; man cannot create a single atom, but the knowledge of
natural processes enables him to make them serve his ends.
Cucumbers grew ages before man learned how to plant them.
No amount of devotion to the cause of horticulture will pro-
duct a cucumber from pumpkin seeds. But the knowledge of
the soil and the temperature in which cucumbers naturally grew
suggested the construction of the hot-house, which enabled the
gardener to raise them months before they could ripen in a
wild state. Such examples might be multiplied ad infinitum^
Similarly, human societies exist and develop spontaneously,
according to certain historical laws; we cannot change those
laws ; but by inquiring into them and consciously applying the
results of our study, we may shorten the time required for the
full growth of social institutions, or remove. such obstacles as
may retard their development. The growth of capitalism in
Japan is an example in point. What it took Europe centuries
to arrive at, Japan has accomplished within barely forty years.
So the Marxist whom the study of industrial monopoly has
led to the apparent paradox that state socialism will be the out-
come of the conflict between antagonistic divisions of the cap-
italist class, need not spend his days in passive contemplation
of how "the free play of evolution's laws will in due time land
the world in a paradise of perfection." Seeing that state social-
ism means primarily public ownership or public control of mo-
nopolies for the benefit of the consumer, not of the producer,
and that there is a class struggle ahead between labor and cap-
ital under state socialism, a Marxist will concentrate his efforts
upon the organization of wage-workers for the protection of
their interests as wage-workers. He cannot change the course
of evolution, but he can make time (and with mortal man time
is all!) by brushing aside all relics of old-fashioned theology,
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588 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RBVIBW
such as the belief in the day of final judgment, relabeled "Social
Revolution," which is supposed to bring about social "perfec-
tion," or "an epoch of rest."
This is one of the most harmful theological superstitions,
because it leads the faithful to neglect the duties and opportuni-
ties of the day, and the zealots to despise the trivial struggles
of the living and to sacrifice them, without mercy or remorse,
to eternal salvation (remember the attitude of some socialists
toward the trade unions).
The day is past when we could content ourselves with the
bare knowledge that the co-operative commonwealth is some-
how going to be established at some distant date, by the revo-
lutionary class-conscious proletariat. We are living to-day in
a period of "Revolution" (in the Lassallean sense of the word).
Trusts, municipal socialism, public ownership in general, com-
binations between trusts and unions, — all these are new forces
which cannot be approached with the old nostrums. It would
be, indeed, damaging evidence of barrenness of thought against
Karl Marx if his work could not stimulate the spirit of research
among his own followers. Difference of opinion, not infre-
quently repudiation of long-accepted theories, mark the de-
velopment of every science. Marxism, if it would maintain its
position as a scientific school, must calmly face the indignant
outcry of the sectarian, of which the following is a sample :
"To invite strife and schisms in a party by continually shak-
ing its foundations with worthless discussions actuated by
superficial understanding is criminal."
Substitute "church" for "party," and you will smell the stake
upon which was burned John Hus. Happily, we are told that
we live in an enlightened age, so we may speak without fear
of being "roasted alive," except in a figurative sense.
Marxist.
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Civilization in Southern Mills
HE miners and railroad boys of Birmingham, Ala.,
entertained me one evening some months ago with
a graphic description of the conditions among the
slaves of the Southern cotton mills. While I imag-
ined that these must be something of a modern Siberia, I con-
cluded that the boys were overdrawing the picture and made
up my mind to see for myself the conditions described.
Accordingly I got a job and mingled with the workers in the
mill and in their homes. I found that children of six and seven
years of age were dragged out of bed at half-past 4 in the morn-
ing when the task-master's whistle blew. They eat their scanty
meal of black coffee and corn bread mixed with cottonseed
oil in place of butter, and then off trots the whole army of
serfs, big and little. By 5:30 they are all behind the factory
walls, where amid the whir of machinery they grind their young
lives out for fourteen long hours each day. As one looks on
this brood of helpless human souls one could almost hear their
voices cry out, "Be still a moment, O you iron wheels of cap-
italistic greed, and let us hear each other's voices, and let U9
feel for a moment that this is not all of life."
We stopped at 12 for a scanty lunch and a half-hour's rest.
At 12:30 we were at it again with never a stop until 7. Then
a dreary march home, where we swallowed our scanty supper,
talked for a few minutes of our misery and then dropped down
upon a pallet of straw, to lie until the whistle should once more
awaken us, summoning babes and all alike to another round of
toil and misery.
I have seen mothers take their babes and slap cold water
in their face to wake the poor little things. I have watched
them all day long tending the dangerous machinery. I have
seen their helpless limbs torn off, and then when they were
disabled and of no more use to their master, thrown out to
die. I must give the company credit for having hired a Sunday
school teacher to tell the little things that "Jesus put it into-
the heart of Mr. to build that factory so they would have
work with which to earn a little money to enable them to put
a nickel in the box for the poor little heathen Chinese babies."
THE ROPB FACTORY.
I visited the factory in Tuscaloosa, Ala., at 10 o'clock at
night. The superintendent, not knowing my mission, gave me
the entire freedom of the factory and I made good use of it.
589
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f~
540 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
Standing by a siding that contained 155 spindles were two little
girls. I asked a man standing near if the children were his,
and he replied that they were. "How old are they?" I asked
"This one is 9, the other 10," he replied. "How many hours do
they work ?" "Twelve," was the answer. "How much do they
get a night ?" "We all three together get 60 cents. They get
10 cents each and I 40."
I watched them as they left their slave-pen in the morning
and saw them gather their rags around their frail forms to hide
them from the wintry blast. Half-fed, half-clothed, half-housed,
they toil on, while the poodle dogs of their masters are petted
and coddled and sleep on pillows of down, and the capitalistic
judges jail the agitators that would dare to help these helpless
ones to better their condition.
Gibson is another of those little sections of hell with which
the South is covered. The weaving of gingham is the principal
work. The town is owned by a banker who possesses both
people and mills. One of his slaves told me she had received
one dollar for her labor for one year. Every weekly pay day
her employer gave her a dollar. On Monday she deposited
that dollar in the "pluck-me" store to secure food enough to
last until the next pay day, and so on week after week.
There was once a law on the statute books of Alabama pro-
hibiting the employment of children under twelve years of age
more than eight hours each day. The Gadston Company would
not build their mill until they were promised that this law
should be repealed.
When the repeal came up for the final reading I find by an
examination of the records of the House that there were sixty
members present. Of these, fifty-seven voted for the repeal and
but three against. To the everlasting credit of young Man-
ning, who was a member of that House, let it be stated that
he both spoke and voted against the repeal.
I asked one member of the House why he voted to murder
the children, and he replied that he did not think they could earn
enough to support themselves if they only worked eight hours.
These are the kind of tools the intelligent workingmen put in
office.
The Phoenix mill in Georgia were considering the possibil-
ity of a cut in wages something over a year ago, but after mak-
ing one attempt they reconsidered and started a savings bank
instead. At the end of six months the board of directors met
and found out that the poor wretches who were creating wealth
for them were saving 10 per cent of their wages. Whereupon
they promptly cut them that 10 per cent, and the result was
the '96 strike. I wonder how long the American people will
remain silent under such conditions as these.
Almost every one of my shop-mates in these mills was a
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CIVILIZATION IN SOUTHERN MILLS Ml
victim of some disease or other. All are worked to the limit of
existence. The weavers are expected to weave so many yards
of cloth each working day. To come short of this estimate
jeopardizes their job. The factory operator loses all energy
either of body or of mind. The brain is so crushedNas to be
incapable of thinking, and one who mingles with these people
soon discovers that their minds like their bodies are wrecked.
Loss of sleep and loss of rest gives rise to abnormal appetites,
indigestion, shrinkage of stature, bent backs and aching hearts.
Such a factory system is one of torture and murder as dread-
ful as a long-drawn-out Turkish massacre, and is a disgrace to
any race or age. As the picture rises before me I shudder for
the future of a nation that is building up a moneyed aristocracy
out of the life-blood of the children of the proletariat. It seems
as if our flag is a funeral bandage splotched with blood. The
whole picture is one of the most horrible avarice, selfishness
and cruelty and is fraught with present horror and promise of
future degeneration. The mother, over-worked and under-fed,
gives birth to tired and worn-out human beings.
I can see no way out save in a complete overthrow of the
capitalistic system, and to me the father who casts a vote for
the continuance of that system is as much of a murderer as if he
took a pistol and shot his own children. But I see all around
me signs of the dawning of the new day of socialism, and with
my faithful comrades everywhere I will work and hope and
pray for the coming of that better day.
Mother Jones.
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Social Defense and Class Defense in Penal Law *
x
FINAL objection to the conception of social defense,
in so far as it serves as a basis for the penal func-
tion, consists in the assertion that "the object of
criminal laws thus far has not been to defend so-
ciety — that is, all the classes which compose it — but, on the
contrary, to protect the interests of the minority, of the small
number of persons for whose profit the political power is es-
tablished."
In a note to the third edition of this book, I took occasion to
refute the one-sided absoluteness of this objection. I pointed
out that what truth it contained did not weaken my conclu-
sions on the defensive reaction against crime, for the essential
thing in those conclusions was and still is that the defensive
reaction against acts which interfere with the conditions of ex-
istence is passing over by a natural sequence from the offended
individual to the collectivity. It is to this that the defensive
reaction belongs, first through its representative and later
through the organs of its judicial or political establishment.
Let me add that since the publication of my second edition
(1884) I have always held that "social defense" corresponds
to the defense of the judicial order in its concrete aspect. By
this expression it is not denied that at every epoch, as M. Vac-
caro says (not without some exaggeration), "justice, reason
and law exist solely for the advantage of the rulers," or if you
prefer, for the sole advantage of the ruling classes. Never-
theless, it can not be denied that a civic evolution is being ac-
complished in the sense that the most flagrant inequalities in
the law as between the ruling and the subject classes are being
eliminated or gradually softened. Thus at first the struggle
was to suppress civil inequality (masters and slaves), then
came the triumph over religious inequality (orthodox and
heretics), and finally political inequality disappeared (with the
triumph of the third estate or bourgeoisie over the aristocracy
and the clergy). To-day the struggle is for the suppression of
economic inequality (proletariat and bourgeoisie), as I ex-
plained more explicitly in another book.f
Thus, then, M. Vaccaro's objection is in no way conclusive,
•This article is taken from the fourth Italian edition of Enrico Ferri's book on Crimi-
nal Sociology, just published by Bocca Brothers, Turin, and is translated from the De-
cember, lflOO, taue of L'Humanite Nourille.
tSoeialism and PostUre Science, a translation of which is published by the bitoroar
tional Library Publishing Co., New York.
548
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SOCIAL AND CLASS DEFENSE IN PENAL LAW 548
and scarcely weakens the solution that the positive school has
given of the problem of responsibility and of penal justice. But
if it does not at all weaken the substantial content of our theory
on the defense and preservation of society, considered as the
sole positive foundation of penal law, the objection of M. Vac-
caro serves nevertheless to define its limits and tendencies,
when, as I have done lately, we join the idea of social defense
with the idea of class defense.
Since the positive school insisted in its beginnings upon the
importance of the anthropological factor in the natural genesis
of crime — and the genial innovation of M. Lombroso consisted
above all in that — the systematic attention of the positivists
was quite naturally and inevitably brought to bear upon the
social factors in criminality and their relations with penal law.
Moreover, that is the very thing I have always done from
the beginning with the classification of the anthropological,
physical and social factors of criminality, and consequently with
the bio-sociological classification of criminals.
Following this evolution of the positivist school of criminol-
ogy certain near-sighted individuals predicted the speedy end of
the Lombrosian doctrine. The matter really involved, however,
as was evident even to foreign observers, nothing but a neces-
sary integration. At the same time certain politico-social events
which ensued in Italy and elsewhere (the anarchist outbreaks,
the Panama scandal, the popular movements in Sicily and
Lunigiana, followed by a repression involving a state of siege)
showed, as if magnified by a lens, the most secret springs of
the penal mechanism.
In sociology there are always some of these significant facts
which serve to throw light on the defects and the spirit of
certain institutions. Thus, the Dreyfus trial exposed the de-
fects and the spirit of military jurisprudence, subjected to mili-
tarism allied with clericalism, and finding itself in conflict with
civil jurisprudence, with the work — however incomplete— of
the Court of Cassation in the same trial. Judicial errors and
victims of military justice were and are a daily phenomena, yet
it needed the tremendous clamor raised by the Dreyfus trial
to make them evident.
The study of the Marxian theory of sociology, to which I
•devoted myself after the issue of the third edition of this book
(1892), had brought me to the conclusion that scientific social-
ism is the logical and inevitable outcome of sociology, which
without* it would stand condemned to a purposeless sterility.
On the other hand, I reached the discovery in criminality of
two great catagories of facts, differing from each other in their
nature, their motives and their consequences, and likewise I ob-
served in the penal function two spirits, more or less antago-
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544 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE IV
nistic, one of which prevailed over the other according to the
different forms of criminality which had to be repressed.
Messrs. Sighele and Jerrero, in their studies of crime in Italy,
had brought to light, with regard to criminality, the distinction
already laid down by the Roman jurisconsults and by Dante
in the eleventh canto of the "Inferno." They each separated
the crimes based on fraud from the crimes involving violence,
calling the first "evolutionary criminality ,, and the second
"atavic criminality," according as the crime took the primitive
forms of muscular struggle for existence, or the more progres-
sive forms of the intellectual struggle, which show a tendency
to become more frequent day by day in contemporary civiliza-
tion.
But this distinction and this terminology had only St morpho-
logical value. They related only to the manner in which crimes
were committed, and did not search deeply into the motives
and the nature of the different forms of criminality.
It is at this stage that I gave to the distinction between atavic
and evolutionary criminality its genetic value, separating of-
fenses against the conditions of individual and social existence
from egoistic and anti-social motives (atavic criminality) as
opposed to offenses from altruistic and social motives (evolu-
tionary criminality).
Murder for personal vengeance, or with the intention of rob-
bing or violating the victim (violent form), — murder with a
view to securing a heritage, and effected by driving the victim
to suicide or exposing him to danger (fraudulent form), — and
likewise the violent or fraudulent foims of crimes against prop-
erty (highway robbery, burglary, theft, swindling, etc.), are
so many characteristic examples of atavic or anti-human crim-
inality, toward which the criminal finds himself impelled by a
motive exclusively egoistic and anti-human and consequently
anti-social in the fullest sense of the word.
Political association, even with a revolutionary end in view;
propaganda by word and pen; organization into a class party;
strikes; opposition to certain institutions or to existing laws,
even when to the setting forth of ideas, which can never be
considered a crime, is added a physical aggression against so-
ciety — these are the characteristic forms of evolutionary or po-
litico-social criminality. It is determined by altruistic and
humanitarian motives, even though these motives be erroneous
and visionary.
There may be also an intermediate category which includes
certain acts having the nature and the motives of evolutionary
criminality, but with exterior forms, violent as well as fraudu-
lent, borrowed from atavic criminality.
In this class belong, among others, murder, regicide, revolt,
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SOCIAL AND CLASS DEFENSE IN PENAL LAW 545
the whole series of crimes committed by politico-social fanatics
from Orsino to Caserio, and even, though these cases are rarer,
theft, forgery and fraud.
Thus, then, the distinction between atavic criminality and ev-
olutionary criminality, which finds a psycho-social foundation
in the nature of its motives, is complicated in real life, perhaps
because of its forms of execution, which may be atavic in evo-
lutionary criminality and vice versa, perhaps also in consequence
of the anthropological category of the criminals.
Atavic criminality, in fact, while ordinarily represented by
born criminals or madmen, may also be the work of criminals of
circumstance or passion. It then takes on the less grave forms
of violence or fraud. Moreover, evolutionary criminality, while
ordinarily the work of pseudo-criminals — that is to say of nor-
mal men (when we deal with forms of simple politico-social
heterodoxy), and also of criminals excited to passion by fanat-
icism (like Orsini and Caserio) or of circumstance (especially
in collective crimes) — may be sometimes represented by born
criminals like Ravachol or by insane criminals like Passanante.
Thus, the practical problem concerning the measures to take
against the author of a crime can only be solved by the simul-
taneous application of different bio-social criteria. It will be
necessary to study the conditions of the act, of the agent, and of
society, the law which has been broken, the determining motives
and finally the anthropological category of the criminal, fol-
lowing the method which is applied by every physician in his
clinic. Here the diagnosis and the treatment are determined by
taking account of a very complicated mass of symptoms, each
of which, if it had to be considered separately, might lend it-
self to different interpretations and might answer to different
states of the individual and his environment. Just so in the
criminal clinic, the offense committed is only one of the symp-
toms. The classic school of penal law is in error when it ac-
cords to this an importance that is absolute and exclusive. To
the attentive study of the crime should be added the examina-
tion and the exact appreciation of the other symptoms of the
person and his environment, in order to complete the diagnosis
and arrive at the correct legal and social treatment of each
criminal.
Meanwhile we may conclude that in all manifestations of
crime, there is always a material menace, an actuak violation,
for the individual as w>ell as for the community, of their present
conditions of existence. The individual is threatened and dis-
turbed in his bio-social personality, and society in its historically
concrete make-up. But what separates them completely is the
difference existing between the motives which have urged the
criminal to act, since in one case we find motives of an egoistic
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r
546 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
and anti-social interest, and in the other, on the contrary, of
an altruistic and social interest. The inference is that there is
a general interest in self-defense against atavic criminality, while
for evolutionary criminality, the interest concerns only a minor-
ity of the ruling class.
Corresponding to this distinction between criminality that is
atavic or anti-human, and criminality that is evolutionary or
anti-social, in the narrow sense of the word only, there is the
distinction between social defense and class defense. This last
may even degenerate into class violence.
The first conception of social defense, which I gave as the
basis and motive of the penal function, is not erroneous, as Mr.
Vaccaro asserted, but it is incomplete. And likewise, the idea
that criminal law is a simple mechanism for the defense of the
interests of the ruling class in all the phases of politico-social
evolution is not false, but it is also incomplete in its one-sided
absoluteness.
The synthesis which unites these two conceptions is that which
I have given in my "J ust ^ ce Penale," namely, that the spirit of
primitive vengeance and of class oppression conceals itself, un-
der the cloak of judicial formalities, around the positive and
legitimate nucleus of social preservation as against acts which
attack not only the political and social order, but also the con-
ditions of human existence, whether individual or collective.
That amounts to repeating that the penal function is the ex-
pression and effect of a double natural necessity which had its
first manifestations in the primitive vengeance adopted as a
principle of individual or family defense. On one side it was
necessary to protect the whole community against the inhuman
forms of criminality, and on the other side was the defense
of a single part of the community, the ruling class. Preserva-
tion or defense will predominate by turns according as atavic
or evolutionary criminality is being dealt with. For the former
attacks the underlying conditions of human existence, while
evolutionary criminality sets itself against the political and so-
cial order, which is always transitory.
In view of this synthesis, we may, following many other writ-
ers, separate in criminal law what accrues to the transitory in-
terests of the ruling class from what has to do with the neces-
sity, for individuals and society, of insuring themselves against
criminality. It is only in this way that criminal and penal
science can have a more efficacious influence over the practical
exercise of the penal function on the part of the state, by taking
its stand on this complete truth, which hitherto had escaped the
classical school, as well as the positive school.
The classical school, indeed, had at first considered crime as
a species of revolt against tyranny, and had thought it needful
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SOCIAL AND CLASS DEFENSE IN PENAL LAW 547
to defend criminals against the excesses of the state. That was
a consequence of the historical events of the nineteenth century
during the marvelous development of the classical school
started by Beccaria, when the struggles for national independ-
ence were accomplishing, in Greece, Belgium and Italy, as well
as in Hungary and Germany, the political emancipation of the
people, and were assuring the triumph of the bourgeoisie.
Everyone then believed that the French Revolution had abol-
ished classes, and this principle had, so to speak, the value of
a dogma, since the proletariat had not yet asserted itself as a
class party. It is from this historic foundation that surged the
current of liberal individualism which I have denounced on sev-
eral occasions, both in the beginnings and in the development
of the classical school of criminal law after the French Revolu-
tion. So we can now see why Carrara said that "penal science
has for its end to moderate the abuses of authority." We can
still see in it the most powerful motive, which all the while re-
mained concealed, of the propaganda carried on by the classical
school against the death penalty and in favor of the jury con-
sidered as a "palladium of liberty "
But the states which are the secular arm of the class enjoy-
ing economic supremacy opposed to this liberal-individualist
principle of the classical school, more or less consciously, in
their codes, the necessity of social defense against atavic and
anti-human criminality. Here in reality is found no trace of
the spirit of revolt with an aim at progress, and the prisoner is
not a victim of power, but no more or less than an individual
who is dangerous, in a given environment, by reason of un-
healthy and abnormal conditions of his organic and psychic
personality.
On the other hand, the positivist school of criminal law, which
has developed since 1878, saw in criminals, at its beginning,
nothing but abnormal, diseased, dangerous and anti-social be-
ings. Its attention was directed exclusively to the manifesta-
tions of atavic criminality, and consequently it emphasized the
principle of the defense of society and humanity against the at-
tacks and "the fear which the criminals inspired."
So, if it had not been restrained by the inevitable hatred of
what is new, which our scientific heresy had to arouse, even in
official spheres, the state might have welcomed the principle of
a more energetic defense against atavic criminality, preached
by the positive school, in order to cover up and justify by this
means the excesses to which the ruling classes have pushed
things in these last years,, by availing themselves of criminal
law against the manifestations of evolutionary criminality, and
even against the non-criminal manifestations of heterodox ideas,
whether in the political or social domain.
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648 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
These excesses of the laws and of the exceptional tribunals,
having for their aim the defense of class under the pretext of
defending society, have taken place, be it well understood, with-
out any complicity or influence on the part of the new positivist
school. They have been the expression of the inevitable ten-
dencies which impel any class that is in power, — tendencies
which, moreover, constitute its weakness and condemn it to dis-
appear before the new social transformation (Marx), which are
like an inseparable link in the natural chain of cosmic transfor-
mations (Spencer) and of biologic transformations (Darwin).
Indeed, as we have been saying, all law, after having been
recognized as the expression of a need of existence, degenerates
into a privilege and an abuse. Also class defense, which is legi-
timate in so far as it is a natural product of social evolution, de-
generates into class violence when new economic conditions
prepare and determine either the supremacy of another class
which answers better to another form of private property; it
is thus, for example, that from quiritarian property with a mili-
tary supremacy the transfer was made to feudal property with
an aristocratic and clerical supremacy and to capitalist property
with bourgeois supremacy — or that these new economic condi-
tions prepare and determine the fundamental transformation
(revolution) of private property into collective property, carry-
ing with it the abolition of classes and consequently the suppres-
sion of all supremacy.
The experience of Italy during 1894 and 1898, where the bour-
geoisie renounced all the conquests that the liberals had wrested
from the middle ages (abolition of special tribunals, freedom of
thought, of the press, of assembly and association), brought
to light this hidden aim of the penal function, this class defense,
which is raising itself by the side of social defense. So we be-
lieve that after the synthesis of which we have just spoken, the
positivist school of criminology has the right to give to the
formula of social defense a broader, more complete and more
efficacious meaning. To-day, in fact, under the name of social
defense we must understand not only the preservation of the
whole collectivity against the attacks of atavic criminality, but
also the protection of the ruling class against assaults of evolu-
tionary criminality. The only difference to be observed is that
the state ougrht to defend itself against evolutionary criminality
in another fashion than against atavic criminality. But in the
future of "criminal law" society ought to attach to the pervad-
ing and common interests of the whole collectivity an import-
ance ever increasing till it becomes exclusive. Science will
reduce more and more, up to its complete elimination, the ele-
ment of interests and class privileges. It will thus transform
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SOCIAL AND CLASS DEFENSE IN PENAL LA W 549
penal law from being to some extent a mechanism of political
domination into a special clinic of preservation.
Thus, the theory of social defense, taken as a basis of penal
mastery (tnagistere penal), an old expression, henceforth void
of meaning, still corresponds in its integration with the synthesis
we have just sketched to the positive and actual conditions of
present society. At the same time it remains also as the end
or criterion of future and inevitable transformations of penal
law in harmony with the data of anthropology and sociology on
the causes, and, consequently, on the remedies of criminality.
Enrico Ferri (Translated by Charles H. Kerr).
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Joy in Work
Yesterday it rained with glee,
To-day the sun shines cheerily;
Growing hard, each blade of wheat
Revels in the wet and heat.
Robin builds and will not rest,
Fascinated by her nest;
Down their narrow, well-worn road
Eager ants bear load on load.
Those whom Nature doth employ
Hail each new day's work with Joy.
Strange indeed that we must ask
Why man alone should hate his task.
Should the ant and bird detest
Bach his proper hill and nest,—
Should the corn despise the soil,
Then men might well dislike to toil;
But as it is, while these obey
Nature in their work and play,
All contented with their lot
Who will say why man is not?
In her workshop Nature stands.
Busy with her artist hands.
Shaping for her own delight
Things that ravish sense and sight
Forth they go, her children all,
And their happy looks recall,
As they deck the tasteful earth,
How love and Joy were at their birth.
We must stamp that trade-mark, too,
On each bit of work we do,
And love of all that we create
Supplant the drudgery of hate.
Use in beauty, Joy in work,
Pride that will not stoop to shirk,
Conscience that sustains the pride,—
These let us scatter far and wide.
Then at last in fellowship
We may forget the master's whip,
And Join with ant and bird and corn
In hailing every workaday morn.
—Ernest Crosby, author of "Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable."
550
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The Charity Girl
By Caroline H. Pemberton, Author of "Stephen the Black," "Your Little
Brother James," Etc.
PROLOGUE.
N an attic room in a wretched street, three children
sat hugging a stove between grimy whitewashed
walls, on which the dim light of a tallow candle threw
awful suggestions of neglected childhood, in the shape
of huge, tousled heads and cadaverous, stooping shoulders,
vaguely but terribly outlined. At the other end of the room
a woman lay in a drunken sleep, with her head on a mattress.
A cheap pine table, a couple of chairs, and an old box com-
pleted the furniture of the room.
It was bitterly cold, and long past midnight. The candle had
sunk to the rim of the candlestick and was a mere ghost of an
illumination, and the one thing that seemed the most alive in
that room was the old stove, for within its bosom a tiny handful
of dying embers gleamed through the cracks of the heavy iron
plates and warmed their rusty surfaces to the temperature of a
living human body. The children laid their faces on it and
hugged its heavy unresponsive angles. When the palms of
their hands became thoroughly warmed they rubbed them slow-
ly over their chests and stomachs. The eldest of the trio, a girl
of nine, sat on a broken chair clasping one of the little boys
around the waist with a pair of thin arms, while he sprawled
face downward on the stove. When opportunity offered, she
loosened one hand from the other to lay it lovingly on the stove-
lid, rubbing her cheek with it afterwards. It was not a matter
of much concern that the soot of the stove was transferred to
the faces of these children until they looked as if ready to take
part in a minstrel show.
"Hold me now, sissy," muttered the older lad, a trifle larger
than his brother, whom he pushed forcibly out of the girl's arms.
The little fellow who was deposed fell to embracing the stove
from the opposite side, but quickly finding a better way, he
climbed upon it with a feeble shout of exultation. There he
sat, lost in profound reflection; a pretty child, with tangled
curls, his deep-set dark-blue eyes looking out from a pallid baby
countenance. His chin buried itself in his ragged jacket; his
hands sought pockets and found holes, which he had always
taken to be pockets, never having known any other variety.
His sister eyed him tenderly and raised a hand to smooth the
hair 'from his forehead.
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652 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
"What's the matter now, Tahm-my?" she questioned defer-
entially, desiring him to speak.
After a pause, with his blue eyes fixed on the blank wall
opposite, in a thin, childish treble, he solemnly addressed an
invisible choir:
"Wunst, we-uns had a big, big fire in 'ere stove ! A long time
ago — four — five — six — twenty-five years ago, and sixteen days.
An* we burned up all de coal to wunst I An' we never have no
more big fire now — never no more !"
"That was when pappy was home," answered his sister, in
a very grown-up, matter-of-fact tone ; "an' now he's 'way agin.
We was good and warm twict las' winter, Tahm-my ; you 'mem-
ber the big hot fire las' winter, when we had hash an' fried
"taters, an* oysters, an' agin when we had ginger cakes an*
onions an' liver?"
"I don't 'member no oysters, Mah-ty."
"Nor me neither," chimed in the other boy.
"Nor ginger cake an' liver, Mah-ty."
"We ain't had 'em never'' corroborated his brother, fiercely.
"Ye ain't got mem'ries like ye was big an' old ! Little chil-
lens forgits things ; but we had 'em, and ate 'em — wunst, twict."
"Was I 'lowed to set on er stove, Mah-ty, when we-uns had
oysters, an' liver, an' ginger cake?"
"'Twould 'a' burnt ye; 'twas a blazin' hot stove — red hot,
Tahm-my !"
"I don't want no red-hot stove to burn me pants an' legs. I
likes to set a-top o' de stove — like I'se a-settin' now — an' git
warm froo and froo, Mah-ty."
The child looked up radiantly into his sister's face. He had
forgotten what being warm was like, but his imagination for
the moment was deeply gratified with the desperate expedient
of sitting on the top of a stove that had a make-believe fire in
its bosom.
"He ain't got no sense, ht ain't !" cried the older boy, as he
slapped the visionary philosopher.
Mattie interfered by dragging the scoffer back to her lap,
where he continued to exhibit his displeasure by kicking Tom-
my's legs.
The younger child, pursuing the policy of non-resistance that
was natural to him, shivered and relapsed into his attitude of
angelic contemplation. Mattie fixed her fond gaze upon him,
and again waited for him to speak. His last observation had
not been quite up to the mark, but words of deep import and
beautiful baby cunning were undoubtedly hovering behind his
lips. Suddenly he raised a warning finger.
"Somefin's comin' outside — it's stopped!"
"A patrol wagon !" shrieked Jimmy, dashing from his sister's
arms to the window.
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THE CHARITY GIRL 553
Mattie was about to follow joyfully, but stopped awe-struck
by the expression on Tommy's face. He sat staring, with eyes
full of terror, his baby forefinger still uplifted.
"The Croolty's a-comin' up the stairs — for we-uns. It's
a-goin' to put us away — to put us away." The child's voice rose
to a shriek, and Mattie with a responsive scream flung her arms
around him.
Jimmy, turning from the window, fled to his sister for safety,
burying his face in her lap. The tramp of heavy feet was
already on the stairway, the sounds coming nearer. The chil-
dren shut their eyes and cowered together. The door was
shaken by powerful hands from the outside; in a second the
bolt gave way ,and two tall men in dark uniform burst into the
room. In the agony of the moment, instinct blotted out ex-
perience, and with one voice the three children screamed
piercingly :
"Mammy ! Mammy ! Mammy 1"
But their God-given protector slept on in profound peace.
One of the men examined her carefully and made a note of
her condition. The other addressed a remark to the children:
"A good society's a-goin' to take charge of you-uns and give
you good homes and an eddication. Come along."
His strong hands grasped the arms of the little boys, who
found themselves suddenly lifted to their feet with no power to
resist. They stopped crying and stared at their sister in stu-
pefaction.
"You come along too, sis," added the officer, in a tone that
was not unkind — "without you want to stay here and freeze to
death. Say, do you mean to come along with these here boys
or not?"
The girl's back was turned in an attitude of stubborn re-
sistance, but she now sprang quickly to her feet.
"I'm a-goin' wherever Tahm-my an' Jimmy's a-goin'," she
answered shrilly, and cast a wild, Amazon-like glance upon her
captor.
No further preparation was needed than to seize a ragged
hood from a corner and thrust her arms into a woman's jacket
many sizes too large for her. The party left the room hastily,
one officer saying to the other that he would send immediately
for an ambulance to convey the insensible woman to the hos-
pital.
Soon afterward, the scene shifted to the office of the "Cruel-
ty" Society, and Mattie waited in breathless suspense for the
next development in the "putting away" process.
Ever since she could remember this phrase had been sounded
in her ears with bewildering variations of meaning. Sometimes
it was used as a threat to awe disobedient children, but more
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554 INTERNA 1 ZONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
frequently it conveyed the idea of calamity, pure and simple,
in which the innocent suffered with the guilty, and children
were "put away" because their parents could not afford to keep
them. Still again, it signified a funeral and a big hole in the
ground out somewhere in the suburbs.
The horrors of implacable fate, of dreadful retribution, and of
icy death were combined in this terrible phrase, and all the
children whom Mattie knew shook when they heard it, just as
our primitive ancestors trembled when the motives of their gods
and demigods became hopelessly obscured, and the innocent
were in immediate danger of bringing upon themselves the
wrath of heaven.
When little children disappeared in this sudden fashion from
the neighborhood in which they lived, it was generally under-
stood that they had been "put away." In many cases they were
never seen again by their playmates ; but occasionally they re-
turned, wearing an altered look and a crushed demeanor, as
if they had been put through a wringing-out process. They
were always reticent in regard to their experiences, but if per-
severingly coaxed they managed to convey the impression that
they had endured inexpressible hardships in a strange and ter-
rible world, inhabited exclusively by "orphans" and supervised
by deities known as matrons and managers. Their reticence
was that of the shipwrecked mariner who dislikes to dwell on
past sufferings, and it was respected accordingly. An organi-
zation known in the slums as the "Croolty Society" was asso-
ciated with these ghastly disappearances. Its way of swoop-
ing down — vulture-like — upon little children who were known
to be innocently happy in their gutter games and midnight
rambles produced a sense of being long shadowed by a mys-
terious and awful power, which can be compared only to some
of the horrors that were abroad when the songs of the Edda
were first sung in the halls of the Scandinavian warriors.
The next day Mattie was dusting the office — to her mind, a
perfectly meaningless service which she performed with cheer-
ful alacrity. An austere-looking, gold-spectacled gentleman,
who sat at a desk, addressed by name another man who sat at
the other end of the room, observing that the McPherson boys:
were to go to the Orphans' Home as soon as they could be
got ready. The other man nodded, and Mattie stared from one
to the other with a quaking heart.
Nothing further happened for some minutes, during which
she went on dusting and pondering. To have asked either of
these dignitaries what was meant by the remark she had over-
heard would have been equivalent to demanding of a printed
almanac what it meant by heralding an eclipse of the sun for
the 1 2th of next February. The officials were not beings with
whom a little child could hold speech, and it could scarcely be
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THE CHARITY GIRL 555
said that a common language existed between them. She went
on dusting, and only her eyes pleaded and questioned while
she argued with the fe^r that was in her heart.
It fluttered and grew still when nothing seemed about to
happen. It fluttered again as the man at the desk closed his
ledger deliberately and put it away. He then arose from hi9
chair and walked to the door, Mattie's eyes following him. She
noticed that he went upstairs, where her brothers were playing
on the third floor. After a silence, she heard the footsteps of
the man descending and little feet accompanying his. Into the
office came Jimmy and Tommy, with their hats and coats on.
Her fear was now clutching her by the throat. Wildly she
gazed upon the children, but they appeared to be stupidly un-
concerned at this great crisis in their lives.
"We-uns is a-goin' to ride in er trolley cars!" said Jimmy,
with a foolish smile.
"I want to go wiv' my buwers," cried the girl in a loud,
abrupt voice, addressing nobody in particular.
"Hurry and get off, said the gold-spectacled gentleman
softly.
The agent caught both boys by the hand and pushed them
hastily outside the door. Mattie flew after them and flung her
arms around Tommy, who stood motionless and aggrieved at
such behavior.
"I want to go wiv* Jimmy and Tahm-my — wiv' my buwers,"
she sobbed in piteous accents.
Some one unclasped her hands from Tommy's neck, and car-
ried her back into the office, where she was placed upon a chair
and held forcibly. Knowing then that she was separated from
her brothers forever, the child broke from her habit of self-
repression into sobs, yells and curses of despair. She con-
tinued to scream the names of her brothers until her voice
weakened from exhaustion and she could only repeat them in
a husky whisper. The agents then carried her upstairs and laid
her on one of the beds in a small dormitory intended for sick
children. An hour later they hoped she had cried herself to
sleep, but as the superintendent turned to leave the room, a
tremulous moan reached his ear, and he carried it home with
him that night in spite of his efforts to shut it from memory :
"I want to go wiv' Jim-my an' Tahm-my. I want to go wiv'
Jim-my — an' — Tahm-m-m-m-y I"
It was the last day of the old year, and as the old superin-
tendent recalled the fact, he made a mental note of another
and more cheering fact which was that the capture of the three
McPhersons carried the number of rescued children from 998
to 1,001 — a splendid record for the year, and a glorious showing
for the Annual Report! This meant "rescue" at the rate of
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5M INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
two children and three-fourths of a child — roughly speaking —
per day. In ten years it would mean 10,000 children — equal to
the population of a good-sized town — all to be neatly and eco-
nomically distributed among the various institutions of the city,
which were hungrily clamoring for them. A beneficent world,
indeed! He fell asleep soothed by this beautiful thought.
CHAPTER II.
Several years later, a young man sat one afternoon in the
office of another philanthropic establishment and became deeply
absorbed in the contemplation of an open ledger. His dark,
brilliant, expressive eyes were tracing condensed biographies.
At the top of one page, under a printed heading of "Depart-
ment of Waifs and Strays," there was inscribed in large letters
the name "Elizabeth Powtowska." The narrative, which was
written and not printed, described the first appearance in elee-
mosynary history of the young person with the high-sounding
Polish name, the story beginning with the death of a Russian
emigrant.
Julian Endicott — this was the name of the serious-eyed young
man — had become the guardian of the Polish girl by accepting
three years before the secretaryship of the "Association for So-
ciological Research" — an influential organization, liberally sup-
ported by people of wealth and culture in the city. Its proud
Doast was that its work was conducted on a strictly scientific
basis, that it was admirably divided and sub-divided into de-
partments wherein all suffering humanity might be accurately
classified, tabulated and studied as specimens of social phenom-
ena. Its object was not to abolish poverty, but to study it as
one would study botany or geology. Nothing that met the eye
in this office was in the least suggestive of alms-giving, for it
held alms-giving in virtuous abhorrence. The ground-glass
partitions, the handsome oak railings, the high rolling desks
and cases filled with card catalogues, ledgers and filed pam-
phlets, together with the presence of numerous clerks busily
writing or operating typewriting machines — all these were ex-
actly what one might expect to find in a large banking house or
flourishing law firm. Philanthropy, under the influence of the
commercial spirit of the age, had turned herself into a boa-
constrictor and was now engaged in swallowing up her two
sisters, Faith and Hope, and proclaiming herself, with swollen
self-importance, to be one of the exact sciences.
When young Endicott had accepted this call, the oddest part
of his engagement seemed to be the fact that the management
of the great association was in the hands of a board of women.
There was not a representative of his sex among them. His
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THE CHARITY GIRL 557
assistants in the work were to be young women. At that time
his curiosity and longing to begin his study of their wonderful
work — for they had written him that there was no other like
it in the world — had rivaled the aspirations of the adventur-
ous heroes who visited, in disguise, the halls of Tennyson's
"Princess."
It is true that in the Annual Report of the "Association"
had long appeared the names of many eminent male citizens who
were grouped on a separate page as a "Board of Advisors,"
with a distinguished Episcopal clergyman conspicuously named
as their president. But Julian was early informed that they
were merely figureheads, and during the years of his labors for
the cause they represented he had never known of their advice
being asked, nor was he aware that they had ever attended a
meeting. When he persistently sought out these gentlemen,
as he did on one occasion, he discovered that several of them
knew not on what street the "Association" was situated, and
others knew not whether the organization they endorsed with
their names was intended ,to shelter aged widows, to reform
inebriates, to furnish soup for the starving, or to house, feed
and educate homeless orphans.
But as a matter of fact, it experimented with all of these
things and as many more as possible, for it was reaching out
towards a wonderful ideal of a "University of Sociological
Research," and had just built a lecture hall wherein all stu-
dents and workers in "charity" might meet to discuss their
problems.
Julian had been frankly told from the first that his sex was
considered a drawback which the gentle philosophers had
agreed to overlook, being more reasonable than the "Princess"
and her followers. He was young, handsome and a Harvard
graduate; he had come to them for an exceedingly small sal-
ary. This was partly because he had studied for the ministry,
and had afterward abandoned all thought of it in search of a
kind of ministration that would hold him in close touch with
his fellows, instead of setting him apart on a pinnacle of spir-
itual superiority. The cares of the "Association for Sociological
Research" seemed the nearest to his ideal of any offer that he
had received ; while its managers believed fervently that in the
equipment of a divinity student, all errors of sex might be con-
sidered as having been effaced in the white light of ecclesias-
tical scrutiny.
It is possible that they were not aware of the extent of
Julian's sacrifice, but they were certainly gratified that he was
so entirely willing to bury himself alive in their service. He
was, it is true, somewhat old-fashioned in his ideas of "charity,"
but it was not to be supposed that the tool in the master's hand
ever fully appreciates all that is in the mind of the master, and
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558 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIEW
Julian was regarded distinctively as the "tool" of the masterly
minds that were directing the work of the Association. If he
did not fully realize the secondary importance of the role he
was playing, it was because his managers were well-bred, soft-
voiced women whose first mission in life was to conform to a
high standard of courteous speech and bearing.
Julian's unceasing efforts had left him worn, thin and sal-
low of cheek, a mere shadow of his former self. So he looked
as a rule when he sat studying those biographical pages. The
Russian waif was now eighteen years of age, and he took a
personal pride in contemplating this young person's later his-
tory. For he had actually prepared her for something higher
than a life-work of dishwashing; she had exchanged house-
work in a farmhouse for a high school and a business college,
from both of which she had graduated with honors. After-
wards, she was employed as a clerk by a business firm.
But the page had to be turned, and now he read the name
"Martha McPherson." The blunders which had wrecked this
young life — so he was told — had been caused by the wretched
inexperience of former superintendents. Julian had himself
failed to grasp the real degradation of the surroundings that
had been selected for her until his rescue came too late. She
had remained on a city truck farm until her nature had
coarsened into a likeness of the soil in which her young feet
had literally been planted. She had dug, scraped and ploughed
during all that was left of her childhood, because, as the own-
ers of her toil declared, "she was fit for nothing else." Before
this she had been dragged through several charitable institu-
tions — each of which had left its mark upon her — but in the
hands of the "Association" she had received the worst scars
that can disfigure young womanhood, and Julian felt the bur-
den of her wrongs now heaped upon his young shoulders. As
secretary of the "Association" he felt responsible for all the
makeshift efforts that had marred the young life but lately
entrusted to his guidance.
The record was as dreadful as one of Ibsen's plays — more
tragic, indeed, than anything Ibsen ever wrote — thought Julian,
as he bit his pencil and glowered at the hideous statements.
Rising from the desk under a sudden pressure of feeling, he
walked to the window and looked out, seeing not the street,
but a pathetic vision of a very young girl wearing a faded shawl
and hugging to her breast an infant. This forlorn caricature
of motherhood made even the beautiful image of the Madonna
seem cheap. His sense of justice was now bewailing the mys-
tery which Martha had flung around the child and herself; she
wrapped herself in it as though it were a robe of spotless purity;
she defied the world to pry into the secret of her child s par-
entage !
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THE CHARITY GIRL 559
Then he thought again of Elizabeth. A few days before, his
visiting agent had reported the shocking information that the
employer of Elizabeth Powtowska had twice presented her with
a bunch of flowers. The agent had called at the office and was
unfavorably impressed by the employer's appearance; she
thought it important that Julian should call on him immedi-
ately. Julian had promised to attend to it, but he bethought
himself of another plan, and finally succeeded in getting the
committees of the "Association" to consent to the employment
of Elizabeth in their office as a supplementary clerk.
"I may venture to hope that she'll be safe here," he thought
with a ghost of a smile.
For a second he paused and contemplated with ironical grav-
ity the singular features of his present career as a knight-
errant, for the bald fact now stood forth clearly that all the
relative advantages of his sex had been adroitly reversed by
his female managers. This picture of himself was so keenly
absurd that he turned from it quickly with a grimace, which
expressed not only his consciousness of having failed to effect
the pose of a hero, but his complete indifference to the fact.
With a sigh he recalled a ridiculous struggle that had to
be carried on, week after week, with various committees of the
board of managers. Every detail of every plan had to be ar-
gued and shoved through these committees by main force of
will. It was like getting a bill through Congress. Some of
these gentle women excelled as obstructionists, and all of them
had always insisted on their right to decide every question in
Julian's work by a majority vote. He did not suspect that
they flocked to the meetings because it offered them an hour
of mental exercise, that they raised questions for the sole pur-
pose of debating them, and not because it mattered in the least
which argument carried. It was all play to them, but death to
this poor lad's elasticity of spirit. He was more depressed than
ever after the meetings, not only on account of the great out-
put of moral enthusiasm which left him exhausted, but be-
cause the fabric of their minds seemed to him every day to be-
come more and more incomprehensible. One of his hardships
was their failure to remember from week to week the few and
simple facts on which their decision of a previous week de-
pended. Their minds were formless, like jelly fish, nebulous
like summer clouds, he thought; or were they only mentally
indolent ? Julian knew that he did all their thinking for them ;
he acted as an obliging memory ; he persuaded, dragged and
forced them to a conclusion, and accepted meekly this conclu-
sion as their "instructions" for the coming week.
They were fashionable women and their superb air of worldly
authority combined with heavenly omniscience for a long time
had deeply impressed him. They evidently believed that they
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560 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
ruled with a diviner right than that of kings. But his faith was
now no longer equal to theirs. He was country-born and bred,
and the vantage ground of social privilege was as yet an undis-
covered land to him.
With the consent of four separate committees at last se-
cured, Elizabeth had begun her new duties only the day before.
She had thanked Julian demurely, and asked whether in the
future she was to consider serself an employe or a ward of the
Association.
"Both, perhaps," he had replied cautiously.
"Then I am still a waif," she had murmured in a tragic voice,
slowly walking back to the desk with her head lowered. Julian
then repeated this remark, which both amused and puzzled him,
to the managers, who argued from it that Elizabeth was an
ungrateful girl. As it was impossible to disabuse their minds
of this idea, he resolved this afternoon to be wary of repeating
to them the strange sayings of the waifs.
It was nearly dark when Julian reached his boarding house.
He ate his dinner mechanically, and was half way upstairs when
a voice in his ear asked in a tone of affected anxiety if the
philanthropic hens had been pecking worse than usual. He
turned quickly to greet a fellow-boarder whose name was
Cooper Denning.
Julian's laughing protest on behalf of his female managers
passed unquestioned, the speaker not being anxious to discuss
the management of the "Association," whose existence he was
unable to regard in any other than a facetious light. He was
a lawyer of moderate means to whom the profession of law
served to pass away the tedious hours that lay between great
social events. Julian found him arrayed usually in faultless
evening dress.
Having drawn Julian almost forcibly into his chamber, Den-
ning lit a cigar and settled himself in an easy chair which Julian
had declined. He observed discontentedly:
"I believe half the delight you ascetics take in physical dis-
comfort comes from the mental distress you know you are
causing selfish brutes like myself."
"Did you think I was seeking discomfort ? I only wanted to
get nearer your fire! Surround me with all the luxuries you
own, — you'll find I'm no ascetic," answered Julian so energet-
ically that Denning laughed.
"Your face was so long at dinner I thought perhaps you had
been renewing your vows."
"I never made any. I'm sorry the study of social problems
doesn't interest you, Denning, but if you were to dive with me
into the unfathomable depths of biology, psychology, and a
few other mysteries — "
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THE CHARITY GIRL 561
"Biology, psychology — unfathomable depths! — that sounds
like woman!"
"That's just what it is," said Julian, clasping his hands over
his crossed knees and contemplating the fire with thoughtful
eyes. "That's just what I've been studying, — woman." He
sighed.
"In love, boy?"
"Heaven forbid! It's the incarnation — the feminine gender
itself — that has been leading me such a dance. I believe it is
one of the evil spirits from Pandora's Box — the worst of the
lot. I should like to box it up again and set it on your mantel
piece."
"My dear young friend, what on earth have you to do with
the feminine gender outside of a lady manager — or a French
grammar — unless you're in love ?"
Julian gave a short sketch of his tragic experiences with the
waifs. There seemed to be nowhere a spot on God's earth
where they were thoroughly safe.
"If I had a world to create," he concluded gloomily, "I am
sure I should find one sex enough. It would make life much
simpler."
"Which one would you leave out ?" asked the older man. As
Julian did not reply, he smoked on in silence, while he contem-
plated his serious young guest with a becoming gravity. Finally
he said:
"You dwell too much on the dismal side of life, Endicott.
You are in danger of exaggerating every symptom of your
youthful charges, because your experience is so frightfully lim-
ited. You want to gain knowledge of life; then you can sift
out the whole business and estimate things in their right pro-
portion. Touch, taste, devour all experiences. Of course I
should not say this if I did not know you came of good stock."
"Thanks; I think I have been gaining considerable expe-
rience of late."
"Yes — all in one line. Your observations of the other sex,
for instance, are confined to a single, wretched, degraded type."
"Human nature is the same in all grades of society — I believe
that." Julian's voice touched suddenly the deeper note of the
enthusiast.
"I do not admit your generalization; you advance it as an
article of faith — a dogma to take the place of a belief in the
Trinity! It's useless to argue with you."
"I perceive that you have a logical mind, Denning, but I
have no way of gaining the larger experience — or time either.
I am willing to count myself a narrow, pent-up stream — per-
haps a very shallow one — but still I hope to accomplish some
good in my groove, like any other specialist."
"Specialist is good — a fine word," observed the lawyer,* smil-
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56a INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
ing. "I am going to think out a plan for you if you will have
the extreme goodness to play something. Make a little music,
won't you ? We'll turn down the gas, as you always play better
when you can hardly see the keys, and I'll lie here and meditate
until I discover a short cut to experience for you."
He turned down the light as he spoke and stretched himself
on the lounge while Julian, with a boyish shrug and a laugh,
went into his own room and opened the piano noiselessly and
tenderly, as musicians handle the instrument they love.
Through the doorway, the red glow of the fire from Denning's
room softened young Endicott's serious profile into a beauty
that was partly Greek and partly of a more modern type.
He struck a few chords absently and then began a musical
reverie.
With the aid of the delicate phrases which Julian's fingers
seemed to be carving out of the silence, an idea came into Den-
ning's head, and he considered it with amused satisfaction while
rings of smoke circled above him.
When the music stopped, he rose quickly and crossed the
threshold to lay his hand on the other's shoulder.
"I always enjoy your playing, but this time it has suggested
wonderful ideas! I have a plan mapped out, an original and
delightful method of obtaining the experience you need."
Julian, striking chords softly, looked up with a dreamy ex-
pression. An amazing proposition was being presented to him.
He was to be introduced into fashionable circles as a stranger
from Boston, a young man fresh from college.
"I shall ask boldly for permission to take 'my young friend'
with me while he is in the city; and after you are introduced
properly, your stay is to be prolonged little by little until per-
haps—"
"I come from New York state, not Boston — and I have been
living in this city over three years. Would you have me
ashamed of my birth and belongings ? Really, I have no time
for such things as you propose."
"You have every night — it's all I have."
"Yes, I could go nights," sighed Julian, relapsing into a bar-
barism that invoked memories of country sleighing parties,
camp meetings, village sociables and the like. Denning smiled
a little and went on unfolding his plan.
"You will have to buy a dress suit and a ten-cent white tie,
and that will cover the whole expense."
"I have both," — Julian developed a faint show of interest, —
"I'm not going in for any ridiculous deceptions — neither are
you — but if I should go with you some evening in my own
character and not as somebody else, I have a suit, and a stun-
ning tie." Pulling open a bureau drawer, he drew out a white
satin butterfly tie for Denning's inspection. The latter looked
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THE CHARITY GIRL 568
at it gravely ; his expression became intensely solemn, — nay, he
began to grow pale.
"It is very handsome," he said in a low voice, as he laid it
gently back in the drawer. "It's quite a work of art and will
do for some rare occasion. The little social affairs we get up
in this city are not worthy of that tie just yet; 'Solomon in all
his glory'— "
"It cost a quarter !" cried Julian, laughing. He gave a side
glance at his friend's face, and blushed deeply. Denning noting
the blush, forgave him.
"You see your plan is impossible," cried Julian, turning away
in vexation. "I appreciate your goodness in wanting to intro-
duce me to your world, but it would be a case of the wrong
kind of tie all the way through. Thanks for your generosity.
Denning laughed. "You can put me on a pedestal if you
want to, for the worship of future philanthropists. I shall not
give up the idea, though it's too late to discuss it fully this eve-
ning. It's time for me to dress — so good-night."
With a nod and a wave of his hand, he disappeared into his
room and closed the door, leaving Julian to continue his mus-
ings on the painful predilections of female waifs and strays.
(To be continued.)
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
^ SOCIALISM ABROAD **
Professor E. Untermann
ENGLAND.
There were 623 strikes and lockouts during 1900, in which 184,773
persons took part. The aggregate duration of the strikes was 3,784,985
work days; 29.4 per cent of lost days fall to the share of the mine-
workers; leaving out the agricultural laborers and those employed in
seafaring, 2.4 per cent of the other workers have participated in these
conflicts. 67.3 per cent of these strikes touched the question of wages;
0.8 per cent that of working hours. 70.5 per cent of the conflicts were
settled by direct negotiations of representatives of the interested par-
ties, only 4.2 per cent were settled by arbitration.
From the "Labour Leader" London, Feb. 9: At Bradford Keir
Hardie, M. P., expressed it as his firm, unalterable conviction that
Queen Victoria was done to death by the war-mongers. (Cheers.) She
died broken-hearted, and the men who directed the nation into war
thought no more of sacrificing the life of a queen than the life of a
common soldier. ("Shame.") They would sacrifice national honor and
all that was held dear if thereby their Interests promised to advance.
And the people still went on their way, silent, dumb, voiceless. Mr.
Hardie proceeded to say that— with the facts before him— he could not
acquit the new King from his full share of responsibility for the war.
(Hear, hear.) A Committee sat to inquire into the Jameson Raid, and
when that point was reached at which certain papers were being de-
manded, which it was alleged would prove the complicity of the Colo-
nial Office in the Raid, the Prince of Wales personally had directly in-
tervened to prevent Sir William Harcourt and the other Liberal mem-
bers of the Committee from pursuing the investigation for the papers,
with the result that the investigation was burked, and to this day the
papers had not been produced. Then, when Cecil Rhodes was under
examination, the Prince walked into the Committee-room and shook
hands with the criminal who was upon his trial. ("Shame.") These
things were not without significance. (Hear, hear.) The Duke of Fife,
who married a daughter of the Prince of Wales, was a director of the
Chartered Company, so that he was steeped to the lips In the Jameson
Raid and in the policy that made for war. Apparently, therefore,
M4
Digitized by UOOQ IC
SOCIALISM ABROAD 565
there was small chance of escaping from militarism at the Interven-
tion of the new King. There was but one way whereby it was pos-
sible, and he would fain still believe that that way was not only pos-
sible, but probable— the creation in the nation and in the House of
Commons of a body of men with eyes to see, and hearts to feel, and
courage to speak— (cheers)— in the presence of kings and princes if
need be. (Cheers.)
The Governor at Gibraltar has prohibited the publication of a local
socialist dally.
FRANCE.
The cabinet Waldeck-Rousseau has not fulfilled the expectations of
its friends. In consequence, that branch of the French socialists which
supported the entrance of Millerand into the cabinet, is now con-
fronted by the alternative to either acknowledge the correctness of
the warning: "No compromise, no political trading," and to demand
the resignation of Millerand, or to be satisfied with the policy of the
cabinet. The acceptance of the latter of these two evils means the
renunciation of the principle of opposition to the capitalist govern-
ment
Waldeck-Rousseau's proposed law against associations which Is of-
ficially directed against the religious orders and their systematic eva-
sion of taxation, causes some apprehension in the ranks of socialists.
The wording of the law is such that it may be applied to other than
religious associations. Especially Section 11 is obnoxious to our com-
rades, as it may be construed so that it could be used against the
newly instituted International Bureau In Brussels.
The executive of the United Socialist Party has decided to send cir-
culars to all socialist and labor groups for the purpose of opening an
Inquiry concerning the political and economic conditions of the working
class.
In Lille, the united ticket of the radicals and Parti Ouvrier Fran-
cais was victorious with a majority of 900 votes in the after-election
for a member of the city council.
In Nlmes the socialist Fournier was elected with a majority of more
than 2,000 votes over his royalist opponent
Lissagaray, the well-known editor-in-chief of "La Bataille," author
of the "History of the Commune," died in Paris on the 25th of
January.
Comrade Edwars, editor of Le Petit Sou," offered army rifles
transformed into hunting rifles as premiums to those of his readers
who were "friends of general armament and believed that an armed
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566 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
nation is indispensable for the protection of the republic." That was
a welcome announcement to the police who at once paid a visit to the
office of "Le Petit Sou" and confiscated forty-six rifles.
According to the January bulletin of the Labor Bureau, thirty-seven
strikes were reported during December, 1900. In thirty-flve of these
strikes 10,089 persons took part; five strikes were victories for the
strikers, sixteen were settled by mutual concessions and fifteen were
lost.
GERMANY.
Another of Mr. Bueck's letters has fallen into the hands of the
"Vorwftrts." This document reveals with startling clearness the social-
ist contention that capitalistic governments are simply the servile tools
of the capitalist class. Apart from showing a most fraternal in-
timacy between the ministry and the industrial leaders, the most sig-
nificant feature is Mr. Bueck's open admission that he brought about
the dismissal of the former minister of commerce, von Berlepsch, be-
cause the tatter's labor reform policy was disagreeable to the indus-
trials.
The outcome of the debate on taxation, in spite of the heroic efforts
of the socialist members, is that the proletarian class must pay an in-
creased price for bread in order to keep the junker class alive, which
has long passed the stage of historical usefulness.
The following item explains why the socialists cannot elect any
candidates to the Prussian Landtag: The elections for the Landtag
are held under a system of three classes of voters graded according
to their yearly taxrate. This is the way this beautiful system works:
In 1898 there were 6,447,253 original voters. Of these 3.26 per cent
belonged to the first class, 11.51 per cent to the second class and 85.35
per cent to the third class. But the 947,218 voters of the first and
second class had twice as many votes as the five and a half millions of
the third class. Hanna ought to study this.
The number of socialist voters in Wiirttemberg has increased from
32,269 in 1895 to 58,666 in 1900. Most of the new converts came from
the people's party.
The social democrats in Saxony can point to a fair record of suc-
cess. In 1900 549 of their comrades were holding offices in municipal
councils.
The following figures show the number of socialists in parliaments
of German states outside of Prussia: Bavaria 11, Saxony 4, Wiirttem-
berg 5, Baden 7, Hessen 6, Saxe- Weimar 2, Oldenburg, 1, Melningen 6,
Altenburg 5, Coburg-Gotha 9, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt 2, Reuss 4,
Lippe-Detmold 3, Bremen 11.
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SOCIALISM ABROAD W7
ITALY.
Comrade De Felice has been prosecuted for accusing the former gov-
ernment commissioners in Sicily, Codronchi, of employing the services
of the Maffla for the purpose of influencing voters by violence, intimida-
tion and fraud. Although the trial clearly established the fact that
by order of the government and its officials the most flagrant viola-
tions of laws had taken place, De Felice was found guilty.
Two new universities for the people have been opened; in Milan
under the auspices of a labor committee and in Rome through the
initiative of college professors.
Comrade Angelo Gabrini, in Milan, was elected with 2,223 votes into
the city council. His royalist opponent received 367 votes.
The comrades are keeping the capitalist and bourgeois elements con-
stantly conscious of the fact that the most dangerous elements of so-
ciety are found in the ranks of the privileged classes. While in Naples
the chief of the Camorra, Cassalle, met his moral death Jn consequence
of socialist activity, two policemen were convicted in the same city
of maltreating a young man to death. The bourgeois deputy Paliz-
zolo is under strong suspicion of having ordered two assassinations,
and an army officer In Verona was convicted of murdering his mis-
tress and cutting her to pieces.
The socialists Nofri, Frisclotti and Pischetto have been sentenced
to eleven months and twenty days' imprisonment for publishing docu-
ments which the government wanted to keep secret. Happily the last
amnesty includes this sentence, and our comrades will be spared the
hospitality of the government.
JAPAN.
American capital is beginning to assume the form of trusts and to
oppress the Japanese laborers. Wherever you find trusts you find
political corruption, but you also find this veritable "balm in Gilead,"
socialism. The comrades in Japan are having a lively time and prom-
ise to have a strong movement within a few years.
Already there is a Japanese Prof. Herron lecturing on socialism
under the guise of "new ethics," and a Japanese college professor lec-
turing on the same subject under the name of "Economic History." A
workingmen's paper, "The Labour World," advocates trade unionism
and takes part in the world wide "class struggle."
Like some famous monarchs, we socialists can proudly point to the
fact that the sun never sets in our realm.
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568 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
SWITZERLAND.
The following shows that the introduction of the initiative and ref-
erendum do not make socialism.
In Ziirich there were 2,570 applications for work during one month,
of which only 462 could be supplied. In Basel the census showed 1,446
unemployed during the same time, while in Bern 172 unemployed ap-
plied for work between December 1 and December 8.
The press is full of announcements reporting the suspension of busi-
ness, lack of work and discharges of workingmen.
RUSSIA.
Socialist agitation is beginning to stir the sleeping Russian giant
Students held tumultuous meetings in Kiew and St Petersburg. A
great number were arrested and transported to the eastern frontier
where they will be pressed into the ranks of local regiments. A later
report of the capitalist press announces that nine students have been
sentenced to be hung.
BELGIUM.
Last month a congress of co-operative societies of producers was
held in Brussels for the purpose of strengthening these societies and
encouraging the public to take more interest in them. Resolutions
favored the establishment of equitable exchanges between societies of
producers and consumers.
Comrade Vandervelde has introduced a bill tending to secure ad-
mission for women to the practice of law.
AUSTRIA.
The new Austrian Reichsrath will be composed as follows: 146
Germans, Liberals and Radicals, 11 Socialists, 22 Anti-Semites, 32
German Clericals, 84 Czechs, 69 Poles, 43 Slavs and Roumanians, 19
Italians. It will be difficult for the government to form a reliable ma-
jority.
DENMARK.
The secret ballot has been adopted for elections to Reichstag. This
improvement materially improves the chances of the socialists.
The number of unemployed is steadily increasing, and a great strike
is on in the iron industry.
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THE WORLD OF LABOR
By Max S. Hayes
During the past month three strikes of national importance have
come to an end. The Chicago building trades strike, which has been
in progress for a year has been compromised. The workers received
Saturday half-holiday, the eight-hour day, abolition of piece-work,
slight increase of wages, time and a half for overtime, and union
men not compelled to work with non-union men, and the latter not
to be employed below the union scale. Concessions made by the
strikers are: Unions to withdraw from the Building Trades council,
sympathy strikes to be abolished, disputes to be settled by arbitration,
no limitation to the amount of work to be performed, modification
of .apprenticeship rules, foremen not to be members of unions, and
no objection to be raised to material or machinery used.— The strike
and boycott of the New York printers against the Sun was declared off,
verbal promises having been given that the uniou could again organ-
ize the plant, but doubts are expressed as to the agreement being car-
ried out It is claimed by New York newspaper men that J. P. Mor-
gan, John D. Rockefeller and other great capitalists stood behind the
Sun in the fight and were ready to continue the struggle indefinitely
rather than yield to the union.— The contest between the National
Foundry men's Association and the Iron Molders' Union terminated
in favor of the men, though they yielded the demand of the bosses
for a reduction of 10 cents a day temporarily, the matter of wages to
be arbitrated on June 4. The main point in the struggle was the de-
sire of the foundrymen to operate "open shops/ 1 and thus the fight
of the molders was for the life of their organization. According to the
agreement the shops will be union as heretofore, the bosses having
pledged themselves to discharge their 325 non-union men inside of 40
days.
About 4,000 silk weavers, mostly women and girls, went on strike at
Scranton, Pa., for more wages. They receive from $2.00 to $4.00 a
week. When a committee waited upon Manager Davis and presented
him with an agreement to be signed he flung back the paper and said :
"Go curl your hair with it." His brutal remarks generally have
served to embitter the girls, and "Mother" Jones, who is on the
ground, has also aided wonderfully in having them maintain a stub-
born resistance.
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570 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
Contrary to general expectations the joint meeting of miners and
operators at Columbus resulted in no serious disagreement Both
sides had made threats of what would be demanded, but the bluffs
were withdrawn and last year's scale and conditions will hold for
another year. The operators held up the bogie of West Virginia, and
claimed they were unable to compete with the non-union fields of
that state, and, therefore, they were unable to grant an increase in
the scale. But it was shown that soire of the operators who talked
loudest were interested in West Virginia mines, and refused to allow
them to be organized, and in that manner they hope to keep down the
wages of miners in other states. It is also true that J. P. Morgan is
heavily interested in mines and railways in the non-union state (he is
busily engaged in organizing a $12,000,000 coal trust in the Fair-
mont district at present) , and it is known that under no circumstances
will he treat with the union. Another reason why the miners' of-
ficials were slow in making a fight in the bituminous fields is found
in the fact that an effort will be made to draw the operators in the
anthracite region of Pennsylvania (which means Morgan largely)
into a conference called for March 12, for the purpose of renewing the
present agreement, which expires on April 1, and securing a few
more concessions. It is expected that the hard coal operators will not
confer, which would mean that another strike may be precipitated,
and that the soft coal miners will be dragged into it. It is no secret
that the anthracite barons are accumulating thousands of tens and
storing same in the belief that another strike will be ordered, and
daily dispatches from Scranton, Hazleton and other points in Penn-
sylvania make predictions that a contest is looked for.
A new Amalgamated Glass Workers' International Union is reported
as having been formed recently to include all branches of glass work-
ers without regard to narrow "autonomy" lines. The new organiza-
tion declares in its preamble that a class straggle exists between those
who produce all the wealth and the capitalists who produce none, and
that the latter control the powers of state, legislative bodies, courts,
militia, police, etc., which are used against despoiled laborers when
they strike for higher wages, shorter hours and better conditions; and
it is concluded that the laboring class must emancipate Itself from the
Influences of its enemy, the proprietary class, by organizing locally,
nationally and internationally for the purpose of battling against cap-
italism, and "must see that its interests be represented in the shops, in
the different branches of the local, state and national administration
and governments." A bosses' organ in Pittsburg declares that the new
union will not be able to live, but the wish may father the thought
Following is a handy reference of place and date of some of the
more important conventions this year: Sheet metal workers, Colum-
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THE WORLD OF LABOR 571
bus, O., April 8; metal polishers, Milwaukee, in April; lace curtain
operatives, Philadelphia, May 6; tin plate workers, Cleveland, May 9;
railway conductors, St. Paul, May 14; waiters and bartenders, St.
Louis, May 14; musicians, Denver, May 14; iron and steel workers,
Milwaukee, May 21; lady garment makers, Philadelphia, June 2;
steam fitters and helpers, Washington, June 3; tile layers and mosaic
workers, Buffalo, June 10; printing pressmen, Washington, June 17;
boot and shoe workers, Detroit, June 17; copper and plate printers,
Chicago, June 19; flint glass workers, Atlantic City, July 8; longshore-
men, Toledo, July 8; stove mounters, Hamilton, Ont, July 10; retail
clerks, Buffalo, July 11; theatrical employes, Toledo, July 15; weavers,
Belleville, N. J., July 20; chain makers, Pittsburg, Aug. 5; printers,
Birmingham, Ala., Aug. 12; plumbers, Buffalo, Aug. 19; paper makers,
Holyoke, Mass., Sept. 7; brewers, Philadelphia, Sept. 8; stationary
firemen, Toledo, Sept 19; cigarmakers, Baltimore, Sept. 7; railway
trainmen, Kansas City, Sept 10; spinners, Boston, Oct 1; coal hoist-
ing engineers, Springfield, 111., Oct. 8; railway telegraphers, San Fran-
cisco, Oct. 14; electrical workers, St. Louis, Oct. 21; painters, Detroit,
Dec. 2.
Chicago wing of the Social Democratic party held a convention in
the foregoing city latter part of January and adopted a resolution in
favor of inviting all factions of the Socialist movement in a conven-
tion to be held in Indianapolis in September. The lateness of the
date, being but two months before election, is causing considerable
discussion.— The Springfield wing of the party issued charters to about
30 new locals in the past six weeks.— Job Harriman and Rev. Chas.
Vail are stumping the Eastern States in the interest of the party and
meeting with good success. Prof. Herron, who has had magnificent
Sunday afternoon meetings in Chicago ever since election, is to go to
New York in the spring.— The Social Democrat is the name of a new
paper at Ardmore, I. T.; the Kay County (Okla.) Populist has flopped
and changed its name to the Oklahoma Socialist, and Chicago Polish
Socialists have started a paper called the Worker.— Joseph O'Brien
was sentenced to thirty days' imprisonment for delivering a Socialist
speech on the public streets in San Jose, Cal.— Exchanges in all parts
of the country announce that recent trust movements have stimulated
widespread Socialist discussion.
The trust movement in the last month has been bewildering to the
average onlooker. Every report of combinations perfected or being
arranged is coupled with the names of Morgan and Rockefeller. The
news of the absorption of the Southern Pacific, the Mexican Interna-
tional, the Mexico ft Arizona, the Sonora railway, the Chicago ft
Eastern Illinois, the Erie ft Wyoming, the Baltimore ft Lehigh, the
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78 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
Delaware Valley ft Kingston and several other small roads by the in-
terests which the foregoing gentlemen represent Is accompanied by the
information that they will soon control the Pullman Palace Car Co..
and will also conduct the express business of the country as soon as
contracts with present companies mature, and that economies are be-
ing introduced that will gradually displace 50,000 employes in the of-
fices and on the railways. But if the foregoing is startling news, the
reports of the organization of a trust of trusts, capitalized at more
than a billion dollars, is simply astounding. Negotiations have been
about completed for a combination of the Carnegie Steel Co., the Fed-
eral Steel Co., the American Steel ft Wire Co., the National Tube Co.,
the American Bridge Co., the American Car ft Foundry Co., the Na-
tional Steel Co., the Republic Iron ft Steel Co., the American Tin Plate
Co., the American Sheet Steel Co., the American Steel Hoop Co., the
Pressed Steel Car Co.— ^a total of twelve trusts— and possibly one or
two more companies will be taken In before long. This huge octopus
is also absorbing coal and coke lands of Pennsylvania and West Vir-
ginia, quoted as being worth nearly $50,000,000, as well as iron mines
in Minnesota and Michigan, and at least a hundred vessels on the lakes
and many ships on the ocean. Thus owning and controlling every ac-
tivity from raw material to finished products competition is completely
destroyed, and the wild talk of a few reactionary organs that certain
capitalists are about to establish competing plants Is simply so much
rot Carnegie was in reality driven into a corner because Morgan and
Rockefeller were in a position to shut off his ore and coal supply and
transportation facilities. Thus, the skeptics who sneered at Socialism
only a few months ago, and who declared with great positiveness that
"it was a dream," are beginning to hedge, and probably inside of a few
years more the old fogies will be ready to admit that socialism is here,
and all that is required is that the people appreciate that fact, for a
New York paper declares that Rockefeller made the boast that in five
years he will control all the industries of the United States. Then
what?
Twenty electric lighting and power companies in New Jersey towns
combined with $20,000,000.— Fourteen furniture plants in Grand Rapids
and Chicago are being organized into a $25,000,000 trust.— A shingle
trust is announced to ensure "stability of prices."— Negotiations are on
foot to trustify the Armour, Swift, Morris and other packing houses of
Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha and other cities.— Horseshoe manufactur-
ers combined.
Machinists are preparing to enforce the nine-hour day in May, and, as
the employers are said to be hostile to the movement, general strikes
may be expected in many, cities.— Organized employes on and along the
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THE WORLD OF LABOR 573
lakes are not yet certain whether they will be compelled to strike this
spring or not. Employers do not appear satisfied to grant the demands
of the men in every branch.
The cigar trust (which is really a branch of the tobacco trust) has al-
ready absorbed 28 factories, and Is building a plant at Binghamton,
N. Y., which will be operated by 5,000 workers. It is claimed the trust
will "break in" 20,000 boys, women and girls as clgarmakers by July
1. This combine controls much of the raw material, machinery and
the jobbing trade.
Prof. Pupin, of Columbia University, has invented a telephone
through which speech can be transmitted 3,000 miles. Bell monopoly
gobbled the patent for $500,000.— Edison is reported as having per-
fected a plan to secure electric power without dynamos, and that as a
result many laborers will be displaced.— Chicago man has invented
a new ditch-digging machine that will do the work of 150 men.— An
electrical machine has been perfected that will tear up the rails from
a track and break them into any length desired.— New machine to
rule 10,000 to 20,000 sheets of paper in two colors has been invented;
a new folding machine enables two men to do as much work as 24 is
announced, as is also a new rotary press operated by three men that
does as much work as 38 with ordinary presses.— Mining machinery
is now a great issue. At least 23 per cent, of soft coal mined is now
turned out by machinery. President Mitchell says in 1899 no less
than 44,000,000 tons of coal were turned out by machines, or 12,000,-
000 tons in excess of 1898. He concludes that if this increase contin-
ues skilled miners will become mere coal shovelers in a few years.
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SOCIALISM AND RELIGION
Professor George D. Herron
So far as it Is a consciously chosen stage of historic development,
socialism is the common life's confession of faith in the goodness and
justice of social evolution. It is the class-conscious attempt of labor
to answer for itself the question which political economy has never
honestly faced, and yet to answer which is its only excuse for trying
to be; and that question is, by what right or by what alchemy do a
few appropriate to themselves the labor-product of the world, while
the actual producers are deprived of all that makes life worth living?
Economic science has led us deep into many complexities of contrary
and subsidized definitions; but it dare not plainly say, what it well
enough knows, that there is no righteous basis for the industrial sys-
tem which employs it The instinct of labor is leading it to the dis-
covery that this capitalistic system is a mere survival of brute force;
that it rests not upon right, but upon sheer economic might.
No one can give a definition of socialism that will be conclusive.
The socialistic idea comprehends more than any definition of it; more
than any man's social philosophy or economic theory; more than is
represented by any creed or sect; more than is intended by any party
or propaganda. There are many different forethoughts, and there will
be many different afterthoughts, about the issues to take root in the
socialistic soil, and about the kinds of seed to be planted therein.
Among equally thoughtful and faithful socialists, there are divers and
widely apart opinions as to the best methods of reaching essentially
the same end. Still, from whatever quarter the socialist idea comes,
it always looks for the co-operative commonwealth and the free in-
dividual.
As comprehensively as we can define it, socialism first means the co-
operation of the whole of society in the production of the economic
goods upon which each member of society depends. It next means
that men shall freely and equally receive of these goods, according to
the ability of each to use them in bringing forth into realization his
inmost and uttermost possibilities of strength and spiritual beauty.
It also means a collectivism that shall be through and through demo-
cratic; a co-operation that shall come from beneath the human fact
and not from above it; an administration of society that shall hear
and heed each man's free and authoritative voice. It furthermore
means what the Sermon on the Mount means; that society cannot be
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SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 575
content with less than the full blossoming of each individual life, and
that In perfect liberty; and then that each individual can be content
with giving to society no less than the fullest and richest output of
his life, and that as his glad and reasonable service.
Turning now to the more specifically spiritual sources disclosed by
socialism, we are first impressed with the immense spiritual service
rendered by the very materialism of its economic philosophy. It is
by this philosophy that the human soil is for the first time cleared of
imposed and coercive faiths, of superstitions and the tyrannies built
upon them, so that an inherent and courageous faith may spring up
and bear the fruit of free and noble action. Having given no hostages
to either past or future, being free from obligation to any creed, so-
cialism may survey all the facts of life without let or menace, and ap-
propriate whatever is good or true in every faith. It may relate these
facts and faiths in a human synthesis that shall for the first time make
truth the sole religious authority. Without knowing it, the socialist
idea grounds itself on a profoundly religious basis by affirming its
faith in the good of fundamental being, and in our power to co-oper-
ate with it; it makes no difference, to start with, whether we call that
being spirit or matter. And socialism takes up into Itself the pro-
phetic and apocalyptic elements of the Hebrew scriptures, when it
looks and works for the happy outcome of human experience and evo-
lution. It need not depart from the strict facts of life, but only be
sure that it takes in all the facts, to find in its own class-struggle a
new form of the idealism of Jesus, so long and faithfully rejected by
the church which bears his name. By being but a little more scien-
tific than the sciences, socialistic science may see that the love-prin-
ciple is the most elemental and persistent fact of life; and it may
further see that the co-operative society is the realization of this prin-
ciple.
In standing for such a society, socialism is in the wisest and deepest
sense a religion, no matter what It may call Itself. The socialist com-
monwealth is a spiritual organization of life in place of the present
wholly materialistic order. A spiritual democracy that shall associate
all with dominion over none, a common good that shall exhaust the
joyous and self-directed serving capacity of each life,— that is what
socialism comes to, if it is true to its genesis. Only such a society
can make possible the realization of full and free individuality; only
such a society can summon to the service and glory of the whole
each man's utmost spiritual output; for individuality cannot be fully
and freely realized except on the scale of universality. A man does
not become truly himself until he takes into his life the whole im-
mediate and historic life of the world, and consciously co-operates
with it, in order that he may give his life back to the world as Its
own perfect blossom.
The socialistic movement can by no means fulfill its religious
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576 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
mission In merely disclosing the hid spiritual sources of life; there is
urgent and Immediate need that it receive these sources as its own
dynamic, if socialism is not long delayed x>r terribly disfigured. The
economic crisis would certainly culminate in a clearly defined issue
between capitalistic despotism and democratic collectivism, were it
not that the capitalistic system cannot go on by any power which it
possesses within itself. Even if It could continue for a long time yet,
capitalism would finally suck dry the body of humanity, and perish
in the catastrophe of the world which it had ruined. But capitalism
knows better than to try to go on of Itself. It will seek to perpetuate
itself by fastening itself upon the new social idea. In order to save
itself, capitalism will go into partnership with socialism, with socialism
as its political pack horse. Already, is capitalism prepared with pro-
grams of benevolent designs for its own firmer establishment:— city
water works, municipal milk wagons, boards of arbitration, art
museums and good government clubs. Carefully written out and
docketed, ready at hand for each emergency, are the treaties of peace
by which capitalism will undertake to destroy socialism by befriending
It. By the wit of its highly hired retainers, in legislative halls and
churchly councils and aeademlc chairs, and by the lack of wit and
spiritual nerve in the socialist movement, a shorn and blinded socialism
may be bridled and saddled by capitalism, and made to carry It to
another age-long goal. The owning class may thus wither by crafty
favors the movement which it cannot withstand by its mightiest
weapons of defense.
In all of this, the capitalistic instinct will be the Identical instinct
of the ruling class in all crises. When the early Christian movement
was well on its way to undermining the empire with Jesus' idea of
life and property, the Roman robber class engrafted itself upon that
movement so securely that Rome rules the world to this day, through
the laws and class-consciousness of those robbers, whose chieftain the
Caesar always was. So completely did the Roman upper class blind
and ride the essentially proletaire and class-conscious party of Jesus,
that official Christianity has performed capitalistic police service ever
since, from the day the monstrous criminal Constant! ne decreed the
orthodoxy of the church, down to this Sunday morning's sermons
from Chicago pulpits. In like manner, when the beautiful Franciscan
movement menaced the world with a renaissance of apostolic Ideals
of the Christ-life and of property, the church destroyed the soul and
meaning of the movement by adopting it, and thereby breaking the
heart of Saint Francis unto death. By such methods did the match-
lessly cruel bandit lords of England, under the lead of Henry the
Eighth as their supremely fit chieftain, ride the Lollard movement to
the greatest capitalistic depredations of history. In the name of the
movement which Wyckllff and John Ball thought to lead towards
communistic democracy, practically the whole of England was stolen
from its yeoman owners, or from the communistic monks, who were
also robbed of the fruits of centuries of free and co-operative labor.
In this way, have the great democratic movements of the last two
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SOCIALISM AND RELIGION 577
centuries been made to prove so disappointing. Upon every high tide
of democracy the institutions of capitalistic despotism came into
renewed power, floating catch-words of the self-governing idea on their
ensigns. The American Constitution, the mangled and snob-led thing
which England calls democracy, the grotesque French Republic, the
stripped and manacled unity of Italy, the Prussianized German
Empire, are alike conscious and deliberate property-class devices for
preventing the common life from coming to a consciousness of the
self-governing idea.
What is to save socialism from a like capitalized fate? Nothing less
than the profound spiritualization of its whole attitude toward life—
a spiritualization in perfect consonance with its pre-Marxian sources.
A mere economic propaganda will never carry the socialist forces to
the co-operative commonwealth. Socialism must become a religion,
a spiritual as well as an economic ideal, a great and unifying faith,
a true and omnipotent revival of the human soul. Not a letter of the
economic philosophy or historic interpretation need be sacrificed, in
order for socialism to avow itself as the historic approach to an ideal
reaching away beyond itself. Nothing but a faith that will awake
the idealistic instinct in the average man, and attach to itself the
glad and immense response of his whole being, will safe-guard the
movement for economic freedom from passing under some new yoke
fashioned for it by the alert capitalistic spirit. If socialism would
break forever the spirit that binds and uses labor for capitalistic gain,
and feed the human spirit that has starved until the capacity for
spiritual desire is almost starved out of it, it must first give back to
the heart of the universe the answer of yea to the question which our
divinest brother went to the cross to ask— the question of whether
human life is able to accept the leadership of the will to love, which
alone maketh free. And now is the psychological moment to speak
this yea, and speak it as a word of world-making faith.
Already have socialists wrought better than they knew; they have
uncovered spiritual resources long hid by the church; they have made
possible a working economic of the kind of life which Jesus defined
as the kingdom of heaven; they have laid foundations for that quality
of public order which the apostle called the holy city, coming down
out of heaven from God. Let them not say what may not be built
upon the foundations which they have laid; let them not bind the
faiths or prayers which may rise from the soil which they have cleared ;
let them not stand guard against the winged ideals that may light
upon the highway which they have prepared.
And then, the socialist movement may so grow in the wisdom of the
will to love, in the beauty of freedom and the grace of truth, that it
shall speak the word that Is to begin a new world, just as Jesus spoke
the word that began the world now ending. It may so grow in faitt
in the divinity of life, and in the knowledge of how to make that faith
Its working power, that it shall at last speak a greater word than
Jesus spoke— the word that shall set the world to building out of
human facts the kingdom of heaven which Jesus planned. It may
rescue the blotched and church-rent pattern of that kingdom from its
official keepers, and spread it before the world as the daily vision of
who and what man is, so that he shall grow until the winds and the
waves and the stars shall obey his mighty will to love. And without
a world-making word of faith, calling men to a social glory far beyond
itself, socialism will never be able to inherit its own immediate
promises. For the walls of the co-operative commonwealth will not
be built until the sacred altar fire of the ideal Is first kindled in the
soul of labor.
(Taken from a lecture delivered in Central Music Hall, Chicago.)
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*
BOOK REVIEWS
»
Two Men and Some Women. Walter Marion Raymond. The Abbey
Press. Cloth, 160 pp., rough edges.
The author spent some time at different social settlements in Chicago
and the work is rather a series of flash-light pictures of the rottenness
of bourgeois society In that city than a conventional romance. Many
sketches possess much power and considered as a series of character
delineations the book is exceptionally strong. As a social study there
Is little that is new or valuable. The author refers to socialism only
enough to prove his utter Ignorance of Its philosophy.
The Clarion Club and Why We Should Study Socialism. Robert
Swift. Published by the Clarion Club, Oddfellow's Temple, Cincin-
nati, O. Art Edition, 244 pp. Uncut, with artistic cover, ten cents.
Here is something that delights both the eye and the reason. The
argument for a study of socialism is one of the most valuable little
tracts for propaganda work of which we know. The conclusion Is so
good that we cannot resist the temptation to quote it. "Socialism is
not a fad; socialists are not faddists, pursuing an idle study or fancy.
They are men and women as good and as bad as you or I. But they
are perceiving the truth, and are looking at it; they are facing it
squarely and are proposing to follow it the best they can. And that
way lies freedom, progress and true life. Socialists have nothing to
conceal, nothing to fear, nothing to be ashamed of. They could have
no better wish than that you understand socialism." The pamphlet
also contains a form of organization for "Clarion Clubs" and we only
hope that If the founders Insist on multiplying organizations in the so-
cialist field they will se-j to It that its members are kept In sufficiently
close touch to the actual political movement to prevent them becom-
ing the useless diletantiis that so often cling to socialist organiza-
tions of this kind.
The Awakening of the East. Pierre Leroy Beaulieu. McClure. Phil-
lips & Co. Cloth, 299 pp., $1.50.
This work by the noted French capitalist political economist has,
since its publication, constituted the standard authority of the Euro-
pean bourgeois on the problem of the far East. Hence Its translatloD
Is welcomed, not alone for the information it contains, but also as giv-
ing the point of view of the bourgeois portion of western Europe on
these subjects. The work Is divided into three nearly equal parts,
treating of Siberia, Japan and China respectively. In each of these
countries he traces the process of "awakening" that has gone on In
678
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BOOK REVIEWS 579
the last few years. His treatment of Japan is far more satisfactory
than of either of the other countries. One is constantly struck with
the remarkable parallel between the history of Japan and that of
many western nations. There is the same feudal system and landed
nobility in existence up until 1868 that prevailed in most European
nations until the close of the eighteenth century, and this nobility, or
Shogunate, was overthrown by a bourgeois ruling class In the same
way to be in turn followed by a similar industrial revolution, the only
great difference being one of the length of time in which these move-
ments took place. There is the same inhuman child labor in the Jap-
anese factories that was to be found in the English cotton mills In the
first half of the last century and this author attempts to justify it by
the same contemptible arguments as were used by the English capi-
talists of that time. The portion dealing with China is the least satis-
factory of the entire work, being very superficial and largely made up
of missionary and trade gossip, much of which has already been shown
to be false. v Yet on the whole it is doubtful if there is any one book
containing as much information in the same space concerning these
very interesting subjects.
Socialism, Revolution and Internationalism. Gabriel Deville. Trans-
lated by Robert Rives LaMonte. International Library Publishing
Company. Paper 64 pp. 10 cents.
This Is perhaps the best short summary of the principles of social-
ism that has ever appeared in the English language. It covers a wide
extent of territory yet is not so condensed as to be difficult of com-
prehension. It must prove of the greatest value in both educational and
propaganda work.
Science and the Workingmen. Ferdinand Lasalle. Translated by
Professor Thorstein Veblen of the University of Chicago. Internation-
al Library Publishing Co., 84 pp. 25 cents.
This is a translation of Lasalle's speech to the court before which he
was arraigned on the charge of "inciting the destitute classes to hatred
and distrust of the well-to-do." It Is an eloquent defense, a scholarly
presentation of the case for freedom of research and investigation and
a summary of many of the points of socialism.
The State and Socialism. Gabriel Deville. Translated by Robert
Rives LaMonte. Paper, 45 pp. 10 cents.
The thesis of this pamphlet is summed up in Its last paragraph as
follows: "Therefore, we must work without ceasing to elect more and
more socialists to office, to permeate and saturate the state more
and more with socialist ideas, until, in the hands of the socialist party
or the class-conscious, organized proletariat, the state with all Its
powers, and especially that of law making, becomes the instrument,
which it is destined to be, of the economic transformation to be ac-
complished. When that transformation is completely accomplished,
there will then be, instead of persons to be constrained, only things
to be administered, and on that glorious day there will still be a so-
cial organization, but it will no longer be a state." The pamphlet
covers a ground on which there has been much need of information In
the English language and will fill a gap in our socialist literature.
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580 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
The Philippines: The War and the People. Albert G. Robinson.
McClure, Philips & Co. Embossed cloth, 407 pp., $2.
This book is largely made up of articles sent to the New York Even-
ing Post when the author was staff correspondent for that paper. This
leads to some repetitions, but these are not of a nature to injure the
work. The opening chapters fills a "long felt want" in the way of a
concise history of the Philippine islands and their people prior to
American contact. It is shown very clearly that the present outbreak
is the legitimate descendant and last stages of a generation long strug-
gle for liberty in which the United States has taken up the part of
tyrant and oppressor, formerly played by Spain. There is a wealth of
information on all phases of the Filipino question and, taken all in all,
it is probably the best general summary and work of reference yet
issued on these subjects.
The Image Breakers. Gertrude Dix. Frederick A. Stokes Co. Cloth,
392 pp.
This book is described as a "novel of modern socialism," and as a
preparation for writing it the writer is said to have lived for several
years in "socialistic colonies." Whether the author or publisher Is to
blame for this ridiculous bull we cannot say, but one thing is sure,
and that is that living in so-called socialistic colonies is pretty good
proof of not being familiar with "modern socialism," and there is noth-
ing in the book to indicate that the author was not profoundly ignor-
ant of the philosophy of socialism. The scene is laid in England and
the opening chapters give a most excellent (and also most laughable,
although it is hard to bay if the author intended it to be humorous)
view of the mass of freaks of all shapes and descriptions who have at-
tached themselves to the English socialist movement. On the socio-
logical side the story is a psychological study in sex relationships, and
as such is extremely well done. Two of the characters are of that
morbid, unnatural type that Infest the socialist movement and fill one
alternately with pity, anger and disgust. They Indulge In countless
heroics which are sometimes painted so real that we wonder If the
writer has not allowed her own creations to deceive their creator as
they have themselves. Over against these is placed a strong, healthy,
almost sensual man, and between these two forces the heroine, a young
artist, alternates. Needless to say that in the end nature (somewhat
idealized to be sure) is successful. Aside from its social aspect the
literary value of the story is such as to entitle It to a prominent place
among the books of the year.
The Ethics of Evolution. James T. Bixby. Small, Maynard & Co.
Cloth, 35 pp., $1.26.
If compelled to find a label for the position taken in this book it
would probably be best expressed by the somewhat contradictory
phrase of "evolutionary Intuitionalism." The opening chapters is a
decidedly hostile criticism of Spencer's Data of Ethics and he seems
to be seeking to accomplish the impossible task of applying the
phraseology of Darwinism and evolution to metaphysical psychology
and intuitional ethics. He does not seem to comprehend the determin-
ing Influence of the economic factor in fixing standards of right and
wrong or to have in any essential way grasped the basic ideas of
evolution. Nevertheless he has collected many facts and observations
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
BOOK REVIEWS 681
of value and the work as a whole Is well worth the attention of any
student of ethics.
Our Nation's Need, by J. A. Conwell. J. S. Ogilvie. Cloth, 251 pp.
Here at last it would seem is the extreme limit in ridiculousness in
works on social topics. The author gravely proposes that bug-a-boo
of the anti-socialist writers "divide up and start even." There is no
doubt but what he has done a valuable service to capitalism in so
doing, as they will now have for the first time an actual Instead of
a straw man to demolish on this point. Probably for years to come
this book will be cited by anti-socialists as a proof that all socialists
advocate such silly tactics.
Prom Slavery to Freedom. Charles H. Davies. Published by the
author at Aurora, 111. Cloth, 464 pp. and Appendix, $2.00.
The author of this has evidently done a large amount of illy syste-
matized reading, and has arrived at a sort of Utopian socialism by a
very round-about method. He begins by falling into the error that
Darwinism is somehow at variance with co-operntion, and confuses
commercial competition with the struggle for survival, and hence
considers it his duty to deny the existence of the latter in the animal
and plant world. It seems a pity that such a mass of labor should
have been wasted upon propositions which a little more familiarity
with the socialist position would have made clear.
Restricted Industry; Its Effect, Cause and Remedy. A discussion of
the relation between the Currency Volume and Industry. William
H. Barry. Schulte Publishing Co. Paper, 136 pp., 25 cents.
The Solution of the Social Problem. C. E. Dietrich. Schulte Publish-
ing Co. Paper, 90 pp., 25 cents.
Both of these pamphlets belong to a stage of society through which
America passed about ten years ago when the middle class of exploit-
ers was still trying to keep on the backs of the laborers by expanding
the volume of currency and other similar social tinkering.
AMONG THE PERIODICALS
Perhaps the most remarkable article of the month is Mark Twain's
"To the Person Sitting In Darkness," which appears in the February
number of the North American Review. Written in the best style of
the great humorist philosopher it is one of the most scathing and
sarcastic reviews of capitalism that has appeared in many a day.
After describing the work of the Chinese missionaries in extorting
tribute from the Chinese he says:
"What we want of our missionaries out there Is not that they shall
merely represent In their acts and persons the grace and gentleness
and charity and loving-kindness of our religion; but that they shall
also represent the American spirit. The oldest Americans are the Paw-
nees. . . . The blessings of Civilization Trust, wisely and cautiously
administered is a Daisy. There is more money in it, more territory,
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
582 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
more sovereignty and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any
other game that is played."
Mark complains, however, that the powers. have not been playing
the game well but have left the covering of Christian virtues off the
"civilization" and the result has been that the "persons that sit in Dark-
ness" have been catching sight of "The Real Thing," which is very
damaging to their trust and confidence. It is worthy of note that the
appearance of this article with some others that have shown a ten-
dency to denounce capitalism is bringing many of his old admirers
to believe that Mark Twain is "getting into his dotage." It will be
remembered that his brother was the Social Democratic candidate for
governor of Kansas last fall.
The only article worthy of note in the Quarterly Journal of Econ-
omics Is Prof. Charles J. Bullock's "Trust Literature: A Survey and
Criticism." This is by far the most exhaustive and best arranged
bibliography on this subject ever compiled. So far as the reasoning
and conclusions of the article are concerned they have that labored
scholasticism, elaborate following of forms and careful artificial classi-
fication that so generally passes for an impartial scientific attitude in
modern academic work.
A good illustration of the style to which reference Is made above is
to be found in the January number of the American Journal of Sociol-
ogy. Prof. Henderson and Prof. Small have a couple of theoretical
articles that remind one of the elaborate and meaningless combina-
tions that children make of pebbles on the sea-shore. An example
of what happens when some one tries to apply these ideas is given in
the same periodical In an article by Royal L. Melendy, on "The Saloon
in Chicago," which repeats with tiresome verbosity the simplest and
commonest facts concerning the saloon and comes to a set of con n
elusions that everyone save fanatics and sociologists always knew.
He, too, seems to think that if only forms of classification are used
and statistics introduced judiciously it is all that is necessary to con-
tribute to human knowledge and to assist in the solution of social
problems.
It is a pleasure to turn from these to something that, while it agrees
even less with socialism, has at least the merit of reality. The Feb-
ruary number of "The World's Work" has more sociology and class-
ified sociological information than all the technical sociological jour-
nals published in all the colleges of America. Its clear cut capitalism
and deification of success is refreshing even if only by antagonism.
It opens with a shout of satisfaction over the fact that the "banks
and trust companies in New York alone paid out on January 2nd the
enormous sum of $140,000,000" in dividends alone, and gives as "a
striking measure of the rate of enrichment" in America that by a
"conservative estimate there are more than 4.000 millionaires among
us." The most notable article is Frederic C. Howe's "The Great Em-
pire by the Lakes," which is one of the most wonderful descriptions
of the economies of modern industry ever penned. Speaking of the
iron and steel trade, he says: "All the essentials of production, in-
cluding the mines, steamships, railroads, docks and furnaces have
been combined under one head. . . . These companies also own
their own mines. Coincident with this consolidation there has oc-
curred a revolution in industrial methods before which earlier achieve-
ments sink into insignificance. . . . From the moment the steam
scoop, handling tons of native ore, touches the soil in Minnesota or
Michigan until the raw material issues as a hundred-pound steel rail
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
BOOK RE VIE WS 583
on the banks of the Monongahela River the element of human labor
Is scarce appreciable. ... A half dozen men will mine five thou-
sand tons of ore in a few hours. . . . The vessels are unloaded
by hoisting devices which will do the work of sixty men. . . . Steel
cars with a capacity of sixty tons are unloaded at the furnaces by
immense cranes which pick the cars clear from the tracks, transport
them to an ore pile, and dump them as easily and simply as if they
were but buckets of sand." Speaking of the Calumet and Heckla
mines he says: 'The stock, of the par value of $25 per share, is now
quoted at $760 per share. Upon this stock but $12.50 has ever been
paid in. . The dividends of one copper mine, whose capital
stock is but $2,500,000, amounted in the year 1899 to $10,000,000." From
the department "Among the World's Workers" we notice especially a
very valuable history of the rise of the pressed steel car of which
there was not a single one in 1897, but of which "twelve million dol-
lars' worth will be built during the present year."
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
*
EDITORIAL
*
FINANCIAL NOTES
"The distinguishing characteristic of American business affairs in the
first year of the twentieth century is a magnitude of financial opera-
tions of which the world offers no parallel. The dreamers of a decade,
or even of ten decades ago, were wild enough in some of their fancies
a 8 to the events that would occur in the new part of the world, but
wild as they were in some respects, they did not begin to imagine
the immensity of such financial transactions as are now of frequent
occurrence. ... A small clique of men are now dealing, under
one central plan of operations, with an aggregate of railroad proper-
ties capitalized at 12,000 million of dollars. On one day a system of
roads representing $200,000,000 is set over in its place to perform
the functions outlined for it. On another day a railroad in an entirely
different part of the country having a bagatelle capitalization of
$32,000,000 is conveyed to another branch of the enterprise, and on
every day the plans go forward quietly in pursuance of the general
purpose. ... In view of the numerous operations of this sort that
are now in progress, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that these
men are recasting the entire railroad system of the United States
with Its nearly 200,000 miles of main track."
The above quotation is not taken. from any sensational newspaper
or socialist publication but from the columns of the Chicago "Econo-
mist," a conservative financial journal devoted to the interests of the
great capitalists and investors. As was to be expected, the "desperate
struggle" that was scheduled to take place between Rockefeller and
Carnegie in the steel trade was but the preliminary bluffing prepara-
tory to a consolidation of the Interests involved. With the resulting
steel trust has also been combined the coal trust giving a combination
with a total capitalization of nearly a billion and a half of dollars.
As these same interests also control the gigantic railroad combina-
tion described above It will be seen that the total capital now con-
trolled by this stupendous organization is about $13,500,000,000, a
sum, by the way, almost identical in amount with the total valua-
tion of all the farms and agricultural Implements registered by the
United States census of 1890.
A little over one year ago the Commercial and Financial Chronicle
of New York attracted world-wide attention by the presentation of
statistics showing that during the year 1898 trusts had been formed
with a total capitalization of $6,000,000,000. This figure was quoted
far and wide as indicating the unheard-of lengths attained by capi-
684
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDITORIAL 585
talist. concentration in this country. Everyone recalls the far-reaching
consternation it created in the ranks of the class of small exploiters
and how they held "Anti-trust conferences" and covered the statute
books with laws forbidding such combinations. Today a single month
sees almost three times as much capital pass into a single organiza-
tion without scarcely causing a protest. Even William Jennings Bryan
has not essayed to offer a "remedy" or suggest a new method of "trust
smashing" however hardup he may have been for "copy" to fill the
columns of his newly established weekly.
An interesting phase of the railroad coLSOlidation is seen In the state-
ment that the services of 50,000 men will be dispensed with as a result
of the economies of unified operation. These will come largely from
the ranks of the managing force and it is likely that a great many
highly salaried presidents and superintendents will be made to realize
the fact that they are only wage slaves after all, even if they have
been a little better fed and clothed in the past than the men who
twisted brakes and shoveled sand. It is also rumored that the con-
tracts between the express companies and the railroads all expire
within the next few years and that at their expiration the trust will
not renew them but will proceed to "expropriate" the present owners.
Another instance of an international trust was furnished by the re-
port of the directors of the Diamond Match Company. According to
their recent statement to the stockholders that company is now oper-
ating factories in England, South Africa, Peru and Germany as well
as in all the principal centers of the timber supply suitable for matches
in the United States.
Meanwhile the record of failures for the three weeks ending Febru-
ary 14, according to Brads treets is about ten per cent more than for
the same three weeks of last year. An examination of the figures in
detail, however, shows that it is only the same old story of the wiping
out of the little exploiters. Out of the 709 failures that took place
during this time 639 were for $5,000 or less and only five were for
more than $50,000.
The "surplus labor" extorted from American laborers by their cap-
italist masters still continues to spread consternation in other coun-
tries. From every quarter come complaints of the ruination of foreign
Industries by "American pauper labor." The Chicago Tribune calls at-
tention to the fact that the Deering and McCormick Harvester com-
panies are clogging the shipping facilities to Russia with their ma-
chines, which have displaced those of all other countries. The reason
for this is that "While he Is paid from 40 to 100 per cent more wages
than the mechanic in European factories the American workman is
enabling his employer to compete against all comers. He is doing
more and better work." In England the London Times states that over
one-half the Welsh tin plate mills have been forced to close down be-
cause of American competition, and there is much talk of a proetective
tariff. But it is not alone in the form of manufactured products that
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
586 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
this "surplus labor" goes abroad. The London Economist estimates
that since 1896 about $100,000,000 of American capital has been In-
vested in Canada. British tram lines are not only made in American
workshops but they are owned by American capitalists. It is stated
that a large portion of the proposed new British war loan will be
taken by American banks and the laborers of this country may have
the consolation of knowing that not only do they produce the meat
with which to feed the British soldiers in South Africa but that they
also furnish the money to the British government with which to buy
the aforesaid product. What the American laborer himself gets out of
this transaction is less clear.
COLLEGE CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS
One of the most encouraging things to the socialist that has hap-
pened in many years recently took place at Leland Stanford Uni-
versity. We refer to the expression of "class consciousness" among
the professors and students on the occasion of the discharge of Prof.
Ross. Professors have freauently been fired before because they
dared to express opinions hostile to the present ruling class, but
hitherto their fellow professors have shown themselves most com-
placent and servile lickspittles. If one of a gang of dogs is kicked,
the remainder will come to his defense; if a crowd of pickpockets
see one of tbeir number arrested, the others rush to assist him. The
higher up the scale the greater the solidarity. This is the principle
that underlies the trade-union, and every one knows how the very first
expression of any social consciousness among laborers Is their ten-
dency to come to the assistance of a discharged comrade. But when-
ever a college professor has been discharged or attacked in the past for
daring to do his duty and teach the truth, his fellow-workers have
been the first to snarl at his heels in response to the commands of
their masters. But In this instance both students and professors have
shown some signs of possessing the characteristics that distinguish
men from beasts. Prof. Howard openly championed the cause of
Prof. Ross, and has been promptly "victimized" and discharged, like
any laborer who makes his consciousness of brotherhood too promi-
nent to suit his boss. A large body of students have also had the
manhood to stand up for their right to think, and at once the class
line appeared, and some of the toadies of wealth promptly proceeded
to haze the daring spirits who had shown a little individuality. This is
the position up to the present writing. Meanwhile the university has
had no difficulty In securing scabs to take the place of the discharged
professors. If now those students who have shown themselves to be
possessed with the spirit of manhood have as much courage as the
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDITORIAL 587
average gang of shovelers on the street, they will find a way of notify-
ing these scab professors what they think of their contemptible
treachery to truth and to their fellow-workers. If they do this, they
will have accomplished more to secure freedom of speech and thought
in American institutions than can be accomplished by volumes of
articles in protest and scores of resolutions of indignation.
We feel that we are entitled to congratulate ourselves upon this
number of the Review. We wish at the same time to express our
thanks to the many friends whose work has made this success pos-
sible. We only ask that each number be compared with any succeed-
ing number in order to show the obvious improvement that has taken
place since the beginning. But we are now able to state that the
best is but a beginning to what is yet in sight for the future. To give
our readers a glimpse of the feast that remains for coming numbers,
we would say that we already have in manuscript, or promised for
very early numbers, articles from Karl Kautsky on "Socialism and
Trades Unions," Kelr Hardy on "The English Labor Movement." H.
Lagardelle of "La Mouvement Socialiste," on "Socialist Municipal
Activity in France," May Wood Simons on "Socialism and Educa-
tion," Miss Ellen Starr on some subject relating to the Artisan and
Socialism, H. L. Slobodin, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and G. R. Ashbee of
England on subjects which these authors are particularly capable of
treating. In addition to these, the letters of Mother Jones will con-
tinue monthly.
We are arranging for a first of May number to excel anything ever
attempted in this line. We hope to make it the most complete sum-
mary of the world-wide Socialist movement ever brought together in
one publication. It only remains for our readers and friends to do
their very best to see that this material reaches those to whom it
would do most good in the cause of Socialism. We ask that each
reader will endeavor to do his part in this regard.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
PUBLISHERS' DEPARTMENT
VANDERVELDE'S COLLECTIVISM
It frs with gTeat pleasure that we an*
nounce for early publication a social-
ist work which Is probably the great-
est contribution to the literature of
the movement that has been produced
since the death of Karl Marx. Profes-
sor Emlle Vandervelde is known the
world over as one of the leading spirits
among the Socialists of Belgium, and
as one of the most scholarly and bril-
liant writers on economic subjects. He
has lately put out through a Paris
publishing house a book entitled "Lie
Collectivisme et L'Evolutlon Industri-
elte." The following table of contents
will give a better idea of his work
than pages of description:
FIRST PART.
Capitalist Concentration.
Chapter I.— The decadence of personal
property.
1. Peasant proprietors.
2. Artisans.
3. Small retailers.
4. Summary and conclusions.
Chapter II.— The progress of capitalist
property.
1. Corporations.
2. Capitalist monopolies (agreements
and trusts.)
Chapter III.— Objections.
1. Workingmen's savings.
2. The democratization of capital.
3. The numerical Increase of small
enterprises:
I. Commercial.
II. Agricultural.
III. Industrial.
4. Summary and conclusions.
SECOND PART.
The Socialization of the Means of
Production and Exchange.
Chapter I.— The three elements of
profit.
1. Wages of insurance.
2. Wages of abstinence.
3. Wages of superintendence.
4. Surplus value and profit.
Chapter II.— The advantages of social
property.
1. The profits of public enterprises.
2. The condition of the workers.
3. The purchase of raw materials.
4. The cost of product and of ser-
vices.
5. The quality of the product.
6. The interest of generations to
come.
7. Summary and conclusions.
Chapter III.— The administration of
things.
1. The proletarian conquest of the
public powers.
2. The governmental state and the
industrial state.
3. The decentralization of social en-
terprises.
4. The state of the future.
Chapter IV.— Formulas of distribu-
tion.
1. The right to the entire product of
labor.
2. The right to existence.
3. Summary and conclusions.
Chapter V.— The means of realization.
1. Expropriation without indemnity.
2. Expropriation with indemnity.
3. Expropriation with moderate lim-
ited indemnity.
4. Summary and conclusions.
688
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
PUBLISHERS' DEPARTMENT
089
Chapter VI.— Objections.
1. Socialism and Individual initiation.
2. Socialism and liberty.
3. Socialism and art.
Appendix— Outline of supplementary
readings
This remarkable book of Vander-
velde's will be Issued in a neat volume
of about 260 pages of a size uniform
with the Pocket Library of Socialism,
and in strong cloth binding, at the
price of 50 cents, postage included.
There will also be an edition in paper
binding for propaganda use at the
price of 25 cents for a single copy, or
$1.00 for five copies, postpaid. Stock-
holders in our co-operative company
will have the privilege of purchasing
paper copies at 12% cents postpaid, and
cloth copies at 30 cents by mail, or 25
cents by express.
The exact date of publication cannot
yet be stated, but it will not be far
from the first day of May. All orders
received with the cash before that
time will be filled promptly upon pub-
lication.
THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO
This book, written in the fourth cen-
tury B. C, is the first of the great
Utopias of the world's literature and
it contains the germs of most of the
Utopian theories that have been pub-
lished since; indeed it is safe to say
that moat of them are only an echo
of the Ideas powerfully set forth in
the Republic. This work has up to the
present time been the exclusive prop-
erty of the leisure class, having been
printed only In the original Greek or
in English editions that were too ex-
pensive for workingmen to buy. We
are therefore glad to announce that
about March 15 we shall issue Book I.
of the Republic of Plato in an entirely
new English version by Alexander
Kerr, professor of Greek In the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin. The first book
does not develop Plato's thought of
an ideal commonwealth, but clears the
ground by a discussion of ethics, and
It is interesting to note that one of
the characters in this dialogue nearly
2,300 years old suggests the Socialist
theory that "good" conduct Is conduct
that harmonizes with the interests of
the ruling class. The book will con-
tain about sixty-four pages, printed
on extra book paper, and the price will
be 15 cents postpaid.
LIEBKNECHT'S LIFE OF MARX
When the history of the Socialist
movement is written, one of its most
interesting chapters will be the period
when Marx, Engels, Llebknecht and
other active Socialists from the con-
tinent of Europe were exiles In Eng-
land, carrying on from there a tire-
less campaign with pen and press
wttiich by and by, with the march of
economic forces, brought them back
in triumph to their native countries.
Shortly before his death Llebknecht,
urged by many friends, published a
delightful volume of his personal rec-
ollections of Marx, dealing mainly with
the period Just mentioned. Prof. Un-
termann has completed a translation
of this book, and we shall publish it
within a few weeks in a neat pocket
edition, bound in cloth, at 50 cents
postpaid. There will be an expenditure
of about $150 necessary before the first
copies can be printed. We propose to
raise this by offering ten assorted cop-
ies of the Pocket Library of Socialism
free to each of the first 300 people who
send 50 cents each in advance for
Liebknecht's Life of Marx. Send on
the 50 cents at once. You will get by
return mail any ten numibers of the
Pocket Library, and you will have
Llebknecht's Life of Marx, in cloth
binding, mailed to you as soon as
ready, probably the last of April. If
this plan works as we believe It will,
we shall soon be in a position to pub-
lish any new book that tine Socialists
of America want.
RECENT SOCIALIST BOOKLETS
We desire to call the attention of our
readers to some of the numbers lately
published in the Pocket Library of
Socialism. This series is issued month-
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
r
500
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
ly at a subscription price of 50 cent*
a year; and single copies are sold at
five cents each.
No. 21 Is entitled "The Trust Ques-
tion" and is a reprint of the clear and
able article by Rev. Charles H. Vail
which was published in the Interna-
tional Socialist Review for September.
The recent developments in concentra-
tion make this pamphlet a timely one
at the present moment.
No. 22 is "How to Work for Social-
ism," by Walter Thomas Mills, and Is
Just the thing for new converts who
are full of enthusiasm but do not know
Just the way to make their work count
for as much as possible.
No. 23 is entitled "The Axe at the
Root" and Is by Rev. William T.
Brown, of Rochester, N. T. In this
booklet he shows how the principle of
the class struggle was recognized and
enforced by Jesus and John the Bap-
tist, and how Socialism to-day embod-
ies all that Is vital in religion.
No. 24 is by A. M. Simons and Is en-
titled "What the Socialists Would Do
if They Won in This City." It an-
swers more definitely than anything
yet offered in propaganda literature
the questions which Socialists are
obliged to discuss in every municipal
campaign.
No. 25, entitled 'The Folly of Being
Good," Is by Charles H. Kerr and Is
a somewhat novel experiment In set-
ting forth the Socialist idea of ethics
In language suited to the comprehen-
sion of young people who have as yet
given no thought whatever to the sub-
jects covered by our Socialist propa-
ganda. It is intended for popular cir-
culation with the hope that it will open
the way for more serious literature.
We are anxious to have a large sub-
scription list for the Pocket Library
of Socialism, and we, therefore, offer
for $1.00 a full set of the twenty-five
numbers already published together
with the next eleven numbers as Is-
sued from month to month, making
thlrty-slx numbers, or three years' is-
sues, postpaid, for $1.00.
Address all orders for books or for the International Socialist Review to
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
Publishers of Socialist Literature
56 FIFTH AVENUE, - - CHICAGO, U. S. A.
WHAT TWENTY-FIVE CENTS WILL
DO FOR SOCIALISM
Under this heading we made in the
February number of the Review an
offer to which we have received a
large number of responses. We find,
however, that we failed to make the
terms of the offer as clear as they
might have been, and this note Is in-
tended to remedy the defect.
Our offer is that for 25 cents we will
send ten copies of the International
Socialist Review to as many different
addresses, and more at the same rate.
We did not mean to offer copies of the
CURRENT number of the Review, but
such back numbers as we can spare
most conveniently.
Moreover, we cannot send a pack-
age of Reviews to one address at this
low rate, for the reason that by so dlo-
ing we should be Interfering with the
trade of newsdealers who are buying
copies of the Review regularly from
month to month and paying 7 cents
each.
Any of our friends who would like
to sell copies of the current number of
the Review for the sake of interesting
new readers in Socialism can obtain
copies from us at 7 cents each, post-
paid, in packages of five or more. We
must ask, however, that they will dis-
pose of such copies in a way that will
not Interfere with, or discourage, the
newsdealers who are handling the
Review. For it Is an obvious fact that
the circulation of the Review on news
stands is a means of propaganda
which is of great and increasing value,
and we ask the co-operation of our
friends to make it a success.
We hope no reader will stop his sub-
scription to buy copies month by
month from the newsdealer, for, by
the time the commissions of the News
Company and of the newsdealer are
paid, there Is not enough left to be of
any substantial assistance In meeting
the necessary expenses of the Review.
We do hope, however, that each of our
subscribers will urge some newsdealer
to keep the Review on sale, calling
his attention to the fact that the News
Company will supply him with copies
at 7 cents, with the privilege of re-
turning those not sold. After a dealer
has begun ordering the Review he
should be encouraged by sending him
customers for each month's issue. This
Is a simple and easy method of prop-
aganda which costs no money and lit-
tle trouble.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
The Socialist Campaign Book of 1900*
CONTENTS.
I. Evolution of the American Proletarian. VIL Wages and Living Expenses.
II. Growth of Trade-Unionism. Vffl. How the Working Class Live.
III. Trusts— Industrial Progress. IX. Towards Plutocracy.
IV. Trusus— Despotism in Industry. X. Capitalist Political Platform.
V. The Farmer and His Future. XL The Growth of Socialism.
VL Labor's Demands and Capitalism's Answers.
The publication of this work marks an era in socialist propaganda
in America in that it places in the hands of every socialist worker the
information and material necessary to his work in as attractive a form
as the material hitherto only accessible to the capitalist parties, while
at the same time this material has been illuminated and explained in
the light of the socialist philosophy. This makes of the book at once
a store-house of knowledge for the socialist speaker and agitator and
the best propagandist work yet published, for it not only presents the
doctrines of socialism in clear, convincing form, but accompanies the
reasoning with the facts from which it is drawn in a manner that can
but carry conviction to any unprejudiced mind.
The table of contents given herewith will give a good idea of the
plan and scope of the work. The first two chapters are not simply a
recital of isolated facts, but so correlate the historical data as to cause
them to form a convincing argument of the trend of industrial
development. The chapters on trusts bring out their two-fold charac-
ter by which they mark at the same time a higher degree of economic
development and a more intense exploitation of the producer. In
"Labor's Demands and Capitalism's Answers" the efforts of organized
labor to secure relief in "labor legislation" through capitalist parties
is treated exhaustively and should prove a convincing argument with
any trade-unionist for the necessity of independent political action
along socialist lines. The chapter on "Wages and Living Expenses"
is a careful examination of our present "prosperity" and a complete
refutation of the claim that the laborers have shared in industrial
advance. The discussion of "How the Working Class Live" is
written by one of the foremost students of this subject in this country
and embraces much material hitherto unpublished. The last two
chapters, on the "Capitalist Political Platforms" and "The Growth of
Socialism," complete the line of argument furnished by the facts in
the preceding chapters, making of the whole work a powerful brief
for the cause of socialism.
Thb Socialist Campaign Book contains 150 pages and is hand-
somely printed on extra book paper with an artistic cover. The
price, including postage to any address, is 25 cents; 5 copies, $1.00.
ADDRESS
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY, Publishers
56 Fifth Avenue, Chicago*
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
Walter Thomas Mills, A* 1VL, Principal
Special Workers Course in the Study of Socialism,
Night School in Chicago, Correspondence School for all points
outside of Chicago,
Following are the Topics for Lessons both in the Night School and Correspondence School.
1. The Earth as the home of oar race— its
making and Its adaptation.
2. Industrial life to primitive man—before the
appearance of slavery.
S. Slavery andserfdom as forms of production.
4. The development of the wage system and
that science of political economy evolved to ex-
pound and defend the wage system.
5. An Inquiry Into the fundamental assump-
tions of the economists and of the socialists.
6. The economic defense of rent, profit, In-
terest and wages.
7. The economic theories of money and Its uses.
8. The economic law of diminishing returns
and theories of population.
9. The ancient trade guilds and the modern
trade unions.
10. Charily organizations and the poor laws .
U. Literature and art as social forces.
12. The monoply and debasement of religion
and education.
13. Utopias, co-operative societies and colonies.
In all of which a few people attempt to assume
the functions of the whole body of society.
14. Modern science and socialism.
16. The era of invention and the rise of modern
Industry.
16. The world market, the International trust
and Imperialism.
17. The growth of the sense of solidarity of
the race.
18. An hour with famous socialists.
19. The rise of Socialism : the class struggle for
profits on the one hand and for existence on the
other becomes a struggle for the control of the
state itself.
20. How to work for Socialism.
WHAT THE CHICAGO WORKERS SAY:
JQTITT WII ^ON °* ***e "Social Crusade," says: — "There can be no
• Oil I 1 YVlLOUn, better work than yours anfl you ought to have a
D WHPPI OCK Prudent of the "Christian Socialist League,'
thousand students at once. 1
EDWIN u. tt in-rLrUvrviY, says:— "This is exactly the work which ought
to go and Mills is exactly the man to make it go.' 1
A. M. SIMONS E& itor of the "International Socialist Review " says:—
f "Socialism needs most of all a large army of effective
workers. This course of lessons will be found to be the very best means for
training yourself to become such a worker. It will put you in possession of
the very facts and arguments you will constantly need in the defence of
Socialism."
Chicago Night School Classes..
meet as follows:— Each Thursday evening,
Schiller Building, 105 Randolph street. Bach
Friday evening, Socialist Educational Club
Rooms, 1132 Milwaukee avenue.
Correspondence School ^Tcht
cago and those who cannot attend the Night
School in Chicago the same lessons are given by
correspondence . The lessons will be printed and
mailed each week, and individual correspon-
dence will answer inquiries, make corrections on
students' reports of work done, suggest further
study on neglected points and so far as possible
do the work of the living teacher.
r^^+iKna+aa An Examining Board consist-
i^rUllUtieS i n g of A. M. Simons, Peter
Sissman and Tames B. Smiley, will direct an ex-
amination at the close of each person's work,
and to those who complete the twenty lessons
a nicely engraved certificate is given .
T^rttic The Tuition fee for the night school
I Cllua is $2.00, for the correspondence school
g.00. In the night school the $2.00 may be paid
advance or 16c weekly If Preferred. In the
correspondence school the $8 . 00 may be paid with
the application, or $1.00 may accompany the
application, and $2.00 be sent on receipt of the
first lesson.
Don't Lay this Down SflU s M£
tion blank or copy it, pin to it a dollar Dill or
three dollars as you may elect and mail at once.
APPLICATION BLANK.
Watltbr Thomas Mills, Chicago,
it
it
it
Dear Sir :■— I hereby apply for member- *
ship in the Correspondence School of the j [
Chicago School op Social Economy ^ \
as advertised in (insert name of this i t
*?
it
paper) I enclose it
: i
dollars herewith and will ^ \
forward the balance (if not now enclosed) i t
on receipt of the first lesson. ] [
it
, it
it
it
Signed .
Address.
Address, The Chicago School of Social Economy,
3962 Langley Avenue, Chicago.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
TS5 INTERNATIONAL
SOCIALIST REVIEW
Vol. I APRIL, 1901 No. 10
Trades Unions and Socialism
HE modern proletarian movement has two kinds of
antagonists: one, the straightforward but brutal an-
tagonists, propose to suppress and to crush it by
force. This kind has already experienced so many
defeats, its method has proved itself to be so abortive, that it
is losing to-day, with the thinking and discerning capitalists
themselves — at least for the time being — ever more of its
credit. All the better does the other kind prosper that says:
"Divide and rule," which, since forcible means do not avail,
seeks to weaken the proletarian movement by splitting it.
These opponents to the rule of the proletariat pose as its
friends; they are not brutal but "ethical," and for this reason
they are all the more dangerous. They artfully try to represent
different proletarian organizations as being antagonistic; they
appear as advocates of sections of the proletarian movement,
in order to propagate distrust and even hatred against the
entire movement. Some of these precious friends of labor avail
themselves of national distinctions to incite workingmen
against workingmen, others turn religious distinctions to the
same account. However, the most intelligent and eminent
among their number try to create discord between the trades
union and the Social Democratic movement. These people
always have in mind the example afforded by England. While
on the continent of Europe the Social Democracy pushes ahead
irresistibly and victoriously, in spite of special arbitrary legis-
lation and of proscriptions, in spite of June butcheries and of
bloody May weeks, the Chartist movement in England came
to naught about the time when the trades unions were recov-
ering ground, and so it happened that nowhere does the cap-
italist class wield to-day the political power more supreme than
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504 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
in England, the country possessing the most efficient, the most
numerous, the best organized, as well as the freest and most
independent working class in the trades union movement. No
wonder that this example should excite the envy of all wide-
awake capitalist politicians and national economists on the con-
tinent of Europe and that their ardent efforts should be directed
towards filling the reigning classes as well as the proletarians
with enthusiasm for that English pattern.
It stands to reason that one nation can and should learn
from others, as it can thereby save a great deal of costly ex-
perience. However, to learn from somebody does not mean
simply to imitate that person slavishly, but to profit by his ex-
perience and knowledge so as to make a sensible and free use
of them. If there is a trades union to be organized effectively,
it is indispensable to consult the English pattern. Of this no-
body was earlier convinced than Marx, who already in 1847
called attention to the English pattern of trades unions ; and if
the trades union movement in Germany and in Austria has
developed so quickly, this is due, above all, to the "Interna-
tional" and to the Social Democracy, both of them influenced
most powerfully by Marx's teachings.
But if we have to determine the relation between trades
unionism and Social Democracy, between trade and class or-
ganization, between economic and political struggles, in that
case we can learn from the English nation only how that rela-
tion should not be.
Never has this become more evident than just at present,
when in consequence of the collapse of the liberal party even
the pretence of a political influence on the part of the English
working class has disappeared and when English trades union-
ism is anxiously striving to promote the formation of a new
independent workingmen's party, in which endeavor it finds it-
self, however, most hampered by the instincts it itself has fos-
tered, the instincts of trade egotism and of disregard of all
efforts towards a more remote and higher aim. The present
stage of the English trades union movement is the least suit-
able one to make its previously existing relation to politics ap-
pear in an ideal light.
It has often been remarked that the trades union movement,
where it does not go hand in hand with an independent political
movement, i. e., where it is not saturated with socialist thought,
acquires somewhat the character of the by-gone guilds.
It has also frequently been pointed out that this guild-like
character shows itself first of all in that the workingmen
organized in trades unions form and constitute, similar to the
old-time journeymen organized in guilds, an aristocracy of
labor, which isolates itself from the unorganized workingmen,
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TRADES UNIONS AND SOCIALISM 595
which raises itself above them, which pushes them down the
deeper into the social mire, the quicker it elevates itself.
Where, however, the trades union movement is at work in the
closest intellectual contact with the political movement of an
independent labor party, there the trades unionists come to be
the chosen champions of the entire proletariat, there they im-
prove, along with their own condition, that of their class. The
increase of duties, resulting therefrom, is compensated by hav-
ing the economic and political basis of their achievements ren-
dered more solid than that of the achievements of a labor aris-
tocracy. The more such an aristocracy of labor leaves the un-
skilled, unprotected, unorganized parts of the proletariat to
shift economically for themselves, the more these come to be
the breeding centers of scabs who stab organized labor in
the back on every occasion and thus paralyze every decided
action. On the other hand the workingmen organized in trades
unions cannot constitute for themselves alone a political party,
but always only one part, and indeed often a powerful one, of
such a party. If they leave the unorganized workingmen to
their own political resources instead of uniting with them in one
political party, then the former must become the tail of a cap-
italist party that pretends to be friendly to the workingmen,
but which, no matter how it tries to protect the interests of its
proletarian voters, can never muster the necessary courage in
face of capitalism and is doomed to fail the sooner, the more
the proletarian character of its followers clashes with its own
capitalist notions — just as is manifested to us by the fate of the
Liberal party in England.
Then again, of course, England also shows us how much the
success of the Social Democracy stands in need of the founda-
tion afforded by a powerful trades union movement. Though,
as the writer of this article has been assured by people that
have been Chartists themselves, there was a closer connection
between Chartism and trades unionism than modern historians
of trades unionism suppose, it is a fact that the time when
Chartism flourished was one of depression for trades unions;
Chartism had no strong and steady economic organizations to
fall back upon, and that explains much of the unsteadiness and
precariousness of its development.
Modern English socialism, however, placed itself in its be-
ginnings in pretty strong opposition to the trades union move-
ment; a stand that may be easily explained, considering the
former conservative character of the trades unions ; but which,
nevertheless, was wrong and of no advantage to the English
Social Democracy. But in the course of time the trades union-
ists have lost more and more their antipathies to socialism, and,
vice versa, the socialists have ever more been losing their an-
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596 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
tipathies to trades unionism, so we find at an ever-increasing
rate the same people at work in both camps, and therefore
we may expect that slowly but surely a relation between the
two movements will be established similar to the one that has
always existed with us in the labor movement of Austria and
Germany.
In view of all this we have not the slightest reason to look
for outside patterns regarding the relation between trades
unions and Social Democracy. The isolation of the trades
unions from the balance of the proletariat has not only the
injurious effect of splitting and weakening the latter, but it
also curtails its chances of development.
We have compared the isolated trades unions to the journey-
men's organizations of old, — the guilds. What has become of
the latter They have disappeared along with the system of
guilds without the least share on their part in surmounting
this system. Their prosperity was linked most intimately with
that of the masters of the guilds; the downfall of the latter
meant that of the former. The same fate is menacing the iso-
lated trade union; it can only prosper if the capitalist system
of production at home continues to progress. Its progress is
very closely bound up with constant and swift enlargement of
the capitalist sphere of power and exploitation. As soon as
the industrial capital of a country has once reached the limit of
its ability to expand briskly, then the time of decline sets in
for the isolated trades unions. Such a decline manifests itself
the same as with the journeymen's associations of by-gone
times, not in the decrease of their membership, but in that of
their ability and desire to struggle. Instead of at the expense
of their exploiters they rather try in partnership with them to
sustain and to improve their economic condition by monopo-
listic isolation of their trade and by increased fleecing of the
people at large.
Particularly in England, the industrial capital of which has
already in many lines reached the limit of rapid expansion, we
see signs of such reactionary tendencies, e. g., with its textile
workers who not only frequently vote for the conservatives,
but who are also reactionary in an economic sense, who rave
about bimetallism and child labor, etc.
In the most striking manner, however, the reactionary ten-
dency of some isolated trades unions of England discloses!
itself in the trade alliances, which since 1890 have appeared
now in one and then in another trade. These alliances
are based upon agreements between a trades union and a com-
bine of manufacturers, whereby the manufacturers agree to
only employ members of the trade unions and these on their
part pledge themselves to only work for the manufacturers
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TRADES UNIONS AND SOCIALISM 697
belonging to the combine, i. e., only for those manufacturers
that sell their products at the higher prices decided upon by the
combine. In this way all competition against the combine will
be rendered impossible. These trade alliances, which are
praised by our bourgeois friends of labor as the commence-
ment of harmony between capital and labor, propose therefore
nothing less than to induce the workingmen to share in the
scheme of the combines to raise prices and to exploit the pub-
lic. They are expected to assist the manufacturers in fleecing
the community and to receive in return a part of the booty. In
this manner it is not any more the capitalist but the community
that would become the enemy of the workingman, or rather of
the aristocracy of labor, which has turned from an exploited
person into an exploiter.
However, the innate incongruities between capital and labor
are so great that we know of no trade alliance of any duration.
These incongruities are frequently so great as to nip the en-
deavors towards the realization of a trade alliance in the bud.
This is very fortunate for social development, for, could the
trade alliances exist and grow, they would inflict incalculable
harm. Consider, for example, the consequences, should the
scheme to start a trade alliance in the coal-mining industry,
as has been attempted, succeed and should the coal miners be
turned into accomplices of the policy of the combine, into pro-
moters of a coal famine — a maneuver particularly tempting
under the sliding scale of wages. The entire balance of the
workingmen would be compelled to declare war not only
against the coal barons but as well against the coal miners!
And what a prospect, if other Orders of workingmen in im-
portant lines of industry followed suit ; if in place of the strug-
gle between capital and labor, we should witness the struggle
between different monopolies in which workingmen in the pay
of their organized masters would enter the field against their
fellow workingmen!
Any independent labor movement would be impossible, and
the labor aristocracy organized in trades unions would be
chained most tightly to the capitalist class and forced on by
its own interest to help the advancement of capitalist politics
at home and abroad.
Of course we will not come to that pass, for the reason al-
ready stated, that, where the combines are the strongest there
the antagonism against the workingmen is also the greatest;
and also for the reason that the bourgeois friends of labor will
never succeed in isolating the trades unions from the rest of
the proletarian movement, or to keep up such isolation where
it now exists. But, in consideration of the present raving about
trade alliances, it is not amiss to picture a state in which they
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
698 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
should prevail. Entirely different from these reactionary and
futile attempts on the part of isolated unions to improve the
economic condition of their members in countries already ap-
proaching stagnation of capitalist production, must be the en-
deavors of such trades unions as go hand in hand with a strong
and class-conscious Social Democracy.
The more the development of capitalist commodity-produc-
tion stagnates or free competition is crowded out by combines
and trusts, the more a class-conscious labor movement will
try not to impart by reactionary experiments a new artificial
life to some lines of production; but it will endeavor to further
economic development by replacing capitalist production for
sale by socialist production for use. When, for instance, the
coal miners, where they exclusively rely upon their trades union
organization, place their hope upon a trade alliance with the
coal barons, they will there, where they support the Social
Democracy, strive for an increase of political power of the
proletariat for its effective use for workingmen's protective
laws, and finally for the expropriation of the mines.
To-day already production for the commonwealth in the
shape of production for state and community becomes a factor
of steadily growing economic importance. To-day it is no
longer the textile industry but the iron industry upon which
the entire economic prosperity of a nation depends. If the lat-
ter prospers, new life pulsates through the entire social body;
if it stagnates we have general depression. The iron industry,
however, is again to a large extent dependent upon state and
communal politics; state and street railroads, canalizations,
army and navy orders, etc., exert a perceptible influence upon
economic conditions. Modern states certainly exert this influ-
ence largely in idly wasting the means at hand, especially Tor
militarism ; they develop production, they employ the produc-
tive powers, but at the same time they permit civilization to
be stunted ; yes, in some countries like Italy, Russia and Aus-
tria militarism leads not only to a waste of products, but also
of productive powers, and consequently to a shrinkage of pro-
duction.
The more capitalism passes over from free competition to
monopoly, the greater the number of its industrial branches
that have become unable to develop adequately, the more the
influence of state and community on the character and extent of
production increases, the more necessary it will be for every
class to gain influence on state and community, the more fatal
will be the isolation of trade unions that prevents the prole-
tariat from depending and promoting its interests effectively,
the more indispensable it will be that the trades uniohists are
inspired with socialist discernment and socialist enthusiasm;
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
TRADES UNIONS AND SOCIALISM 5W
the more necessary, on the other hand, that the Social Democ-
racy should be able to rely upon a numerous army of organized
trades unionists, on which rest the deepest and firmest roots of
its power.
The trades unions will not disappear along with the capitalist
mode of production like the journeymen's organizations van-
ished with the guilds. On the contrary, they will constitute the
most energetic factors in surmounting the present mode of
production and they will be the pillars on which the edifice of
the socialist commonwealth will be erected.
K. Kautsky.
( Translated by E. Dietzgen. )
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
Education and Socialism
T will be the aim of this paper to outline some of the
features of our present educational system, the revo-
lutionary tendency that is now pervading it, and
finally the changes that socialism would bring, for in
no department of social activity shall we see a greater or more
vital revolution than in the methods and object of education.
To state exactly the object of education both the sociological
and the biological side must be taken into consideration. That
the social phase of education has been largely ignored in the
past may be seen from the following definitions taken from the
older writers.
Plato says, 'The purpose of education is to give to the body
and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which
they are capable."
Kant defines education as "the development in man of all the
perfections which his nature permits."
With John Stuart Mill "education includes whatever we do
for ourselves, and whatever is done for us by others for the
express purpose of bringing us nearer to the perfection of our
nature."
Herbert Spencer briefly states that "Education is the prep-
aration for complete living."
Rosseau contents himself with the following indefinite gen-
erality: "Education is the art of bringing up children and of
forming men."
In Horace Mann we see the beginnings of a new idea in edu-
cation : "By the word 'education' I mean much more than the
ability to read, write and keep common accounts. I compre-
hend under this noble word such a training of the body as shall
build it up with robustness and vigor, at once protecting it
from disease and enabling it to act formatively upon the crude
substances of nature — to turn a wilderness into cultivated fields,
forests into ships, or quarries and clay pits into villages and
cities. I mean also to include such a cultivation of the intellect
as shall enable it to discover those permanent and mighty laws
which pervade all parts of the created universe whether ma-
terial or spiritual. This is necessary because if we act in obe-
dience to these laws all the resistless forces of nature become
our auxiliaries and cheer us on to certain prosperity and tri-
umph. But if we act in contravention or defiance to these laws,
then nature resists, thwarts, baffles us, and in the end it is just
600
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDUCA TION AND SOCIALISM 601
as certain that she will overwhelm us with ruin as it is that God
is stronger than man."
Looked at from the standpoint of society as well as of the
individual education means not only the adaptation of the in-
dividual to his surroundings, but the training of him to under-
stand his environment and thus the giving to him the power to
modify and change it.
Take for example the physical sciences. Education along
this line would require an actual understanding for instance of
the ways of applying energy — by means of the lever and in-
clined plane with their modifications — of the nature and modes
of action of electricity, the combinations resulting from the
union of different chemical elements, etc.
This knowledge could then be used either in new inventions
or in handling present instruments and materials.
Again the value of history in education does not consist in
the mere knowledge of events or even the exercise of memory
on the part of the individual, but in the principles for the guid-
ing of future society that may be drawn from past events.
The power to read is not in itself an education, but the abil-
ity, by means of which to gain, for use, the knowledge of facts
that have been stored up by other minds. This educative value
of reading, this spontaneous making the thought of the author
our own, has been largely destroyed by the formal methods of
teaching the subject which have created a habit of observing
words and their forms, and that only.
Like all things, however, education has been shaped in the
past by the economic conditions and needs of society. Long
after the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries education was
chiefly characterized by a ponderous scholasticism. The artisan,
not looked upon as in any sense a 'scholar/ was the only one
who with a trained eye and hand could design and make things.
The past century has been a commercial age. It has been
marked by great inventions, a vast increase in trading, an
enormous production of goods and a growing intricacy of
diplomatic relations. A careful survey of present educational
methods and subjects of study must convince one that our
schools are made to further the interests of the ruling industrial
and commercial class of the time.
The technical school that practically serves the purpose of
training passably good engineers and mechanics has marked
the past few years. It is owing to these technical schools that
Germany is to-day becoming able to compete with England
both in foreign markets and at home. These best technical
schools turn out such a vast number of trained workmen that,
underbidding each other in the labor market, their value has
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602 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
decreased until Germany has the cheapest skilled workmen to
Plans are now under way to establish a commercial school
at Berlin in which the study of English will be an especial fea-
ture. The reason for this is plain. Not only a great portion
of Germany's export trade goes to English speaking countries,
but English is fast becoming the language of commerce, and
a knowledge of it will enable her merchants to push their trade
more effectually.
It is interesting also to note the founding of large schools
of diplomacy. When modern inventions have put great na-
tions into proximity, and relations are strained, and it has be-
come a matter of nations competing for trade and struggling
for territory, it is essential that capital should have trained
diplomats to skillfully adjust conditions in foreign markets and
political circles and thus guard the interests of the ruling class.
Such a school is founded in connection with Columbian Uni-
versity at Washington.
Mr. Gunton says in his magazine that more interest should
be taken in these schools because — and here he gives the cap-
italists' only reason for education — "of the expansion of Amer-
ican trade." It is in this way that education, which should aim
at a rounded man and womanhood, is being used for the benefit
entirely of the ruling class.
The American manufacturer has heretofore been obliged to
draw his designers and workmen of especial skill from foreign
schools, but now he sees that it is far more economical to found
such schools at home, either private or public, and use them to
produce a limitless supply of skilled laborers who, competing
with each other, will lower wages.
A recent report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics gives the
following as one of the reasons for introducing manual train-
ing into schools : "Parents realizing that employers will insist
that the boy 'start at the bottom in any industry' decide that
he must begin to gain the industrial experience which will in-
crease his wages at as early an age as possible, rather than to
continue in school to learn the things which they feel will never
be of real use to him."
It is with difficulties such as these that the new education
finds itself confronted from the first. Like all revolutionary
movements, for that is what in its essence the new education is,
it finds the old system which it has outgrown — seeing itself
unable to check the new movement — seeking to pervert it to
its own benefit. Hence the ruling class see only in domestic
science as taught in the schools the means for training more
competent servants or in the sloyd work the making of better
carpenters.
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EDUCA TION AND SOCIALISM 608
Our system of industry to-day demands no individuality of
the immense body of workmen. It has grown so far mechanical
that in the great industrial establishments there is small need
for the inventor or artist. This is not contradictory with the
statement before of the demand for skilled workmen. Skilled
workmen in no way presuppose workmen with any individual-
ity developed.
Our school system has not advanced beyond the demands of
the economic conditions. It has the same leveling effect. So
many children promoted into a certain grade. The same work
and way of doing this work is required of each one. The
teacher with forty or fifty children in a grade has little oppor-
tunity to study the inclinations of each child. All are made to
"toe the same mark." The whole system has become dull and
mechanical. The very power of initiative is crushed out of
the child.
So entirely commercial is our age that we are not surprised
to find our school system run upon that basis. Sufficient school
buildings there are not. In many neighborhoods we find from
two to three hundred children waiting to be admitted to the
kindergarten while many more are attending but half time.
The number of teachers compared with the number of pupils
is altogether insufficient. Forty-five or even sixty we have seen
enrolled in ward schools under one teacher. These teachers,
who are always overworked, are usually utterly unable to teach
anything of science. They have never themselves been trained
to observe or handle real things and cannot teach the child
to see.
Laboratories in physical science may appear to us well
equipped considering the condition of the apparatus used in
teaching physics or biology or chemistry ten years ago, but the
vast majority of the schools are still poorly furnished with the
materials for good work in these lines.
But we are passing at present through a period of change,
from a^ time of commercialism and competition to an age of co :
operation, and there are present among us the germs for a new
growth in education. Already the awakening has begun to be
felt.
Beginning as far back as Rosseau, Cemenius* and Pestalozzi,
an effort was made to put actual perception and observation of
things by the senses in place of the mechanical instruction by
word. It is not generally known, however, that it is to Robert
Owen that we owe some of the first clear statements of the
coming revolution in education. He was the first to look upon
instruction and education from the point of view of the social
organization.
A recent article in the Neue Zeit points out that he brought
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604 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
forward the demand that the intellectual and physical education
should go hand in hand. That from the age of eight years
up instruction should be united with regular labor in the house
and garden. That from the thirteenth year children are to
enter into the higher arts and trades and thereby be prepared
to further the riches and well-being of society in the most
effective manner with the greatest satisfaction to themselves.
He comprehended the activity of labor in instruction not only
as a necessary pedagogical end, but also as a means to the
social production of goods.
The new education and socialism are being developed from
the same social conditions. They have as their object the same
thing — freedom. Freedom for each one to develop his own
methods of thought and his own initiative. To express in ma-
terial form his inner being. It is recognized that to furnish this
inner man and woman with material there must be supplied
to them constant contact through their senses with the out-
side world, for that which is produced is but what has gone in
through the senses, modified by each one's individual charac-
teristics and tendencies.
It is for this reason that the new education emphasizes the
importance of work with tools and materials that the pupil
may design and work out his design in a material form. Nature
studies also are a prominent feature of the new education.
Trips into the country bring the city child into contact with
an entirely new phase of life. He sees the seed put into the
ground, its growth, the processes by which wheat is converted
into flour and bread, the growth of flax, cotton and wool as ma-
terials for the manufacture of texile fabrics. This is in a sense
a "return to nature," but not the nature of Rosseau. It is
a nature made large by the discoveries of science. Science has
opened to us the secrets of the world's formation, the laws of
gravitation, the mysteries of the growth of physical organisms
and all its secrets have been discovered only by men working
in direct contact with the things they tried to reveal.
Education under socialist conditions would produce men and
women, not machines. As Marx has said, the end of socialism
is "an association wherein the free development of each is the
condition of the free development of all," "an economic order
of society which together with the greatest possible develop-
ment of social productive power secures the highest possible
harmonious development of human beings."
To-day like the press, the pulpit and the lecture room, so
the school is under the control of the ruling class which uses
its control for its own advantage. When capitalism has de-
manded technical skill its schools have produced men trained
along that line; when it has required any other quality its
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EDUCA TION AND SOCIALISM 605
schools have produced men with that quality; and when it has
found that ignorance, docile and unquestioning, has served its
purpose best it has reduced the laboring class to that condi-
tion.
To go a step further: as pointed out by Prof. John Dewey,
"education should be a process of living and not a preparation
for future living." The school to-day is an unnatural life cal-.
culated only to prepare one for future work. It has no relation
either with the home or society. The life of the average Amer-
ican student is abnormal and returns him to society both scho-
lastic and pedantic. To-day so-called education ends with the
class-room instead of all of life being an education. Even the
spirit of social solidarity and mutual interest is destroyed by
the present system. For one boy to assist another in his task
is a thing for which to be punished.
Again, education is far more than the training of the in-
tellect alone. It was a principle of Greek philosophy to unite
instruction with music and exercise. Socialism would require
and make possible the physical development as well as the men-
tal. Productive work would be united with education. The stu-
dent studying into the mechanism of the steam engine would
be able to put his hands upon one and learn by use its every
part.
Following the manufacture of textile goods and the develop-
ment of industry he would trace it through its primitive forms,
the wheel for spinning and the clumsy loom for weaving up
through the complicated machinery and vast looms of a mod-
ern factory.
Studying the industries connected with the production of
foodstuffs, of agriculture in general, he would go out and use
the tools employed in the raising of grain and see the growth
from the pointed stick with which the savage scratched the
ground or the flail that our forefathers used to beat out the
grain, to the steam plow and threshing machine of to-day.
The pitiable ignorance of our city population of anything
to be found in the country, and of our country folk of great
manufacturing establishments, and of the majority of our whole
population of any part of actual life outside the narrow con-
fines of their own work must be a source of wonder to future
generations.
Society would thus be presented to the child in a simplified
form. He would begin with the primitive stages through which
society passed in savage and barbarous times and gradually
ascend in his education to the complex and intricate system of
modern industry. Anthropology and etymology would become
live and inspiring topics.
For education to be of value it must present a unity in the
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606 INI ERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
things taught. Our old system has made each department of
science an entirely new and foreign subject to the beginner,
having no relation to anything either before or after. For in-
stance, take geology and geography. Few have been trained
to see that geography is the study of the present conditions of
the earth that represent a certain stage in a long series of
stages ; that geology is the study of these different stages and
the changes in the earth's surface that have resulted in its pres-
ent physical appearance.
Every teacher should be able to take up subjects of study
in due relation to society and the science of society — sociology.
So far this unity or synthesis has been a subject of discussion
among philosophers, but has received slight notice from the
pedagogue.
At the beginning we stated that the object of education is
the adapting the individual to his surroundings and the fit-
ting him to change and modify them. These changes should
be such as would lead to the progress of humanity. In how
infinitely few cases, however, has science been used to benefit
the condition of the great mass of the people except when pro-
tection for the ruling class demanded that certain steps should
be taken. For example, study has put on record much of value
in the scientific preparation of food, in the producing of sani-
tary conditions, and in the prevention of diseases.
Under socialism, with pure food well prepared and healthful
surroundings, we shall look to see disease practically stamped
out and the life of man extended.
The century has seen great advance in science in medicine,
experimental psychology and physiology ; yet this knowledge is
the monopoly of the few. As shown by Kropotkin in his "Ap-
peal to the Young": "In our society to-day science is only an
appendage to luxury which serves to render life pleasanter for
the few, but remains absolutely inaccessible to the bulk of man-
kind." "The philosophers are crammed with scientific truths
and almost the whole of the rest of human beings remain what
they were five or ten centuries ago, that is to say, in the state of
slaves, and machines, incapable of mastering established
truths." "We need to spread the truths already mastered by
science, to make them part of our daily life, to render them
common property."
Again, the discoveries in experimental and physiological
psychology must revolutionize many of the old methods of
teaching. Genetic psychology, for instance, has shown that
the first years of a child's life must be a time of physical
activity. The body of the child is not yet under con-
trol. It is impossible for him to remain quiet. Yet we
remember when school discipline required these little bodies
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EDUCA TION AND SOCIALISM 607
to remain quiet in a seat for four or six hours in a day and
our schools are but just beginning to throw off this old disci-
pline and to guide this aimless but necessary activity into use-
ful channels.
Not only the normal but the great number of abnormal will
be benefited by the discoveries of psychology. Study has shown
what can be done to make the mentally defective useful to
society. Likewise with the criminals. The social conditions
that have created a large part of them being changed their
number would be vastly decreased. The others could be used
somewhere in the social organism in productive work. This
in no way argues that we should weaken the race by protect-
ing the mentally weak and degenerate. Both would finally be-
come wellnigh extinct if not left to perpetuate at will their
kind.
May Wood Simons.
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Social Evolution
UNDERSTAND the socialist philosophy to be a cer-
tain affirmation that all social institutions depend up-
on the industrial institution; that this industrial in-
stitution develops by necessary laws towards monop-
oly; that the people, through the state, are destined to appro-
priate this institution at some stage in its course towards mo-
nopoly ; and that, when once thus appropriated, the other insti-
tutions will reflect the new conditions of the industrial institu-
tion.
I believe in the prime importance of the industrial institu-
tion. But I assert that the socialist philosophy deprives itself
of the lessons of history because it does not build its conclu-
sions upon a study of the evolution of other institutions. Other
institutions have passed through the stages which the indus-
trial institution is now following, and have reached certain des-
tinations whose consideration might aid us in setting up a goal
also for the industrial institution.
The institutions which I wish to consider are the family, the
church, the state, industry and the political party. I would de-
fine an institution as a certain definite, and continuous, but
evolving mode of living together for the satisfaction of a pe-
culiar affection. Each institution has its own psychic affec-
tion. In the family it is sexual and parental love; in
the church, it is religious belief; in the state, coercion; in
industry, love of work; in the political party it is "political
principles," or class interest.
My contention turns upon a clear distinction between the
production of wealth, on the one hand, and private property,
on the other hand. I agree that the production of wealth is
fundamental. It is nothing more nor less than man's control
over the forces of nature. This control determines in large
part the form of organization of all institutions. But private
property is entirely different. Private property is a social institu-
tion. It is a certain way of living together. It is not merely
private property in the means of production. It is private prop-
erty in the material basis of each institution. I hold that every
social institution begins as private property. It then develops
towards monopoly. Whether it shall always remain private
property or whether another form of organization shall take
its place, depends upon circumstances which I shajl try to de-
scribe.
In primitive society there are no definite institutions. All
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SOCIAL EVOLUTION 609
are merged and blended in a homogenous, indistinct commun-
ism. This communism of society is the corrolary of the sup-
pression, or, rather, the non-emergence of the individual. The
individual first emerges as a self-conscious personality when
external objects begin to have a definite value to him, i. e.,
when, in the struggle for existence, his own survival depends
on appropriating an external requisite. Now, no object has
value if it is unlimited in supply. Private property begins with
those objects which, relatively to other objects, are limited in
supply: To the primitive man, air, water, land, are unlimited.
The only limited objects are women. Private property begins
as property in women and children, and the exclusive owner-
ship of these is a "requisite of survival," to use a term sug-
gested, in other connections, by Professor Patten. He who has
a number of women has food-hunters, weapon-carriers, numer-
ous children, and eventually male slaves and warriors.
The family thus begins as private property in women and
children. Thereafter natural selection and survival of the fit-
test are the survival of the fittest institution. Individuals do not
contend with individuals, but families contend with families ; or,
rather, proprietors of families with similar proprietors. Sur-
vival depends upon three qualities, — size, unity and generalship.
Size is numbers. Other things equal, numbers will win. The
family grows in size until it numbers tens of thousands. Unity
is the subordination of individuals to the will of one man. This
is brought about by what is essentially a right of property,
namely, control over subordinates through either direct con-
trol over their bodies or indirect control over their means of
subsistence. This is the administrative side of private prop-
erty, as distinguished from the equity side, which is the right to
have the profits. By means of the rewards and punishments
thus centralized in the hands of the proprietor, the subordinates
execute his will as one man. This gives scope to the third requi-
site of survival, generalship. The institution with the shrewd-
est, boldest, wisest and most adroit manipulator of men will
survive. These three qualities of survival — size, unity and gen-
eralship — characterize each social institution. They develop in
the course of time into monopoly and centralization. The fam-
ily produces the patriarch ; the church, the pope ; the state, the
king; the political party, the boss; the industrial institution,
the trust.
Now, notice that each of these institutions has developed into
monopoly while it was dependent upon a requisite for survival
which was limited in supply. The partriarchate depends upon a
scarcity of women and men relative to land, and therefore the
monopoly of the family is based on private property in women.
But when land becomes scarce relative to men and women, the
patriarchs, or heads of families, no longer cared for private
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610 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
property in men and women, but transferred their ownership
to land. Direct control over the bodies of men and women,
known as slavery and polygamy, became indirect control over
the means of their subsistence, known as feudalism.
Feudalism again proceeded towards monopoly. The largest
landowner had the largest army, the greatest number of faith-
ful retainers, and, with good generalship, he became the king.
Feudalism ended in absolutism, based on private property in
land.
A similar outcome attended the church. Here the peculiar
object of private property was based on the conviction of guilt
on the part of worshipers and their faith in the holy power
of priests to remit punishment. The priest operated through
his ownership and monopoly of certain external material objects
which could be reduced to private property, namely, the sacred
relics of saints, the holy shrines, ^nd the apostolic succession.
Through these he held the keys of heaven and hell, he forgave
sins, and he even healed mundane diseases, or inflicted mundane
woes. In the course of several hundred years priests acquired
the landed property of the faithful, bishops arose in command
of priests, and the Bishop of Rome in command of the other
bishops. This monopoly depended on private property in relics,
shrines and land.
Here we have three monopolistic heads of three institutions —
patriarch, king and pope. Let us notice what followed. In
Asiatic countries this monopoly was handed down to succes-
sors and became hereditary despotism. In England and Eu-
rope there were two other very different developments. The
institution of the state continued to be a monopoly, but the
feudal nobility, who had been suppressed by the king, forced
him to admit them into partnership in the management of his
monopoly, through the House of Lords. Later, the middle
class forced admission into the combine through their repre-
sentatives in the' House of Commons. The state thus became
a genuine partnership of three social classes. Legislation
henceforth required the consent of crown, lords and commons,
i. e., each member had a veto on the two others.
With the family it was different. King and church in Eng-
land very early agreed to regulate the family. Polygamy was
prohibited as early as King Alfred, Later, the father was pro-
hibited from selling his daughter and the husband from buying
his wife, without her consent. Still later, she was given the
right of divorce in case of ill treatment. The state created
courts of law with power to protect her against her husband.
What is the explanation? It is this: The family was orig-
inally based on two principles, coercion and persuasion, i. e.,
private property in women and sexual love. The state, through
its laws and courts, has deprived the patriarch of his coercive
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SOCIAL EVOLUTION 611
control — i. e., his private property — in his wife, and has com-
pelled him to resort to persuasion. The state also, in more
recent times, actually takes children away from brutal parents,
and so compels the parent to depend on love rather than coer- r
cion for obedience. The family no longer is a coercive institu-
tion based on private property, but is a persuasive institution
based on love. Where love is lacking, the law forbids coercion.
In other words, the state has extracted coercion from private
control and has constituted itself the sole coercive institution.
The state thus becomes the coercive framework within which
the family operates. The state increases its functions and its
organs, increases its courts, recorders, executives, legislation,
to deal with this framework of the family, and in so doing per-
mits the family to cultivate more extensively its persuasive
soil, sexual and parental love. Husband and wife each has now
a veto on the other. Their relation is one of partnership, based
on persuasion instead of private property based on coercion.
Wherever coercion and persuasion are combined in the hands
of one person, the coercive factor tends to suppress the per-
suasive factor. By separating the two and making itself the
sole coercive factor, with tribunals and rules of procedure to
exclude caprice, the state liberates the persuasive factor and
allows it to spring forth and bloom into the ideal family.
The church is following the course of the family. Two fac-
tors have combined to break its monopoly — loss of faith in
relics and loss of earthly power. The loss of faith was largely
caused by an over-supply of relics. The church grew greedy
and permitted the manufacture and sale of counterfeit relics.
This aroused Martin Luther and brought on the Reformation.
Private monopoly of relics no longer sufficed when the people
ceased to want relics. Afterwards the state proceeded to con-
fiscate the lands and treasures of the church and to take away
its right to taxation and tithes, and to substitute state courts
for ecclesiastical courts for trial of church offenders. In this
way the state deprived the church of control over the material
necessities of life, and so took away its powers of earthly re-
wards and punishments. Henceforth the state became the co-
ercive framework of the church, and the church itself has been
compelled to rely upon persuasion. This is known in history
as "the separation of church and state." The priest henceforth
becomes the preacher. The appeal is made to religious faith
and not to the fear of earthly punishment, or the hope of earthly
reward. The church monopoly is broken, and innumerable
sects and no-sects take its place, each and all dependent upon
the persuasiveness of their tenets.
Let us now compare these three institutions — family, state
and church. In primitive society they were blended and un-
differentiated. The patriarch was also priest and king. He
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612 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
relied on both coercion and persuasion. But in our Western
civilization, in course of time, the state has been differentiated
as the coercive institution, and the family and the church as
persuasive institutions. The state takes to itself the control of
its members whenever that control depends upon material
external agencies, such as direct control of their bodies or in-
direct control over their necessities of life. This is coercion.
The family and church become voluntary institutions, seeing
that henceforth they must rely upon psychic influence and not
external force. Each relies upon its own peculiar psychic prin-
ciple, the family on sexual and parental love, the church on the
conviction of sin and the longing for moral perfection. Notice,
therefore, the corresponding difference in organization: The
state, which is the coercive institution, continues to be a mo-
nopoly, but, instead of a monopoly ruled by the caprice of one
man, it is a monopoly ruled by the partnership on equal terms
of three leading social classes. The other institutions, family
and church, on the other hand, cease to be monopolies and are
relegated back to their original competitive organizations. But
this competition among themselves can no longer be evil, be-
cause the institutions have lost their teeth and claws. They can
no longer build up a hierarchy of subordination because they
connot enforce their decrees against the will of the subordinate.
They can only survive by converting the free will of individ-
uals, i. e., by persuasion. This competition is not competition,
but emulation. Thus the outcome of social evolution is a coer-
cive institution, exercising a monopoly of coercion, and two
persuasive institutions without monopoly, competing, or emu-
lating, among themselves within the coercive framework pro-
vided for them by the other.
How do the foregoing principles apply to political parties and
business corporations ? The persuasive basis of a political party
is the common political principles or class interest of its mem-
bers. The coercive basis is the rewards and penalties in the
hands of its managers. And, strangely enough, these rewards
and penalties depend upon subordination of the state itself to
the political party. The state has become sovereign over fam-
ily and church, but the political party has become dominant
over the state. The sources of this domination are the follow-
ing: Election of superior officials; appointment of subordinate
officials; distribution of contracts, franchises and legislative
favors ; private control of elections and primaries. With these
four sources of power the management can command the ser-
vices of "workers" and "heelers"; and, being organized for
success, the greater size, unity and generalship develop the
"boss." Now, notice the tendency of recent legislation. The
Australian or secret-ballot law has taken the election machinery
out of private hands; has made the ballot an "official" ballot
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SOCIAL EVOLUTION 613
printed by the state. The more recent primary election laws
have taken the party primary itself out of the hands of the party
managers, and have handed over party elections to the control
of officials appointed and paid by the state. "Civil service re-
form" has attempted to take subordinate offices out of the hands
of the party boss, but it has largely failed because the boss
appoints the examining board. All of these reforms are based
upon the assumption that the political party is necessarily a
monopoly under a single management, and that the only thing
to do is to guarantee to the rank and file a voice in the election
of the management. But there are two other reforms which,
if adopted, would break the monopoly of the party. One is the
initiative and referendum, by which contracts, franchises and
legislation could be controlled directly by all the voters instead
of indirectly through a party organization. The other is pro-
portional representation, by which all minority parties could
select their proportionate share of officers without being com-
pelled to come jnto the ranks of the two leading parties. This
would tend to break up the existing parties into the naturally
divergent groups which at present are forced into one com-
bination. With all of these reforms the political party would
lose its coercive control over the necessities of life and would
be compelled to depend solely on its political principles to per-
suade voters to join it. The management would no longer have
rewards and punishments to distribute and the boss would be-
come the statesman.
As regards business corporations, it is too much to say that
every business which ends in a trust must be owned and oper-
ated by the state. The state is the coercive institution. If the
state can extract from private corporations every element of
coercion on which they now depend to discipline their subor-
dinates, it will then deprive them, as it has deprived the family
and the church, of the basis on which monopoly rests. They
will become purely persuasive institutions, and the only psychic
motive to which their managers can appeal will be the love of
work. If men are freed from the dread of hunger and old age,
just as they have been freed from the lash, then they will work
only for those leaders who can fully persuade them, and under
those conditions and hours which they like. Under such cir-
cumstances the trust, like the family and the church, would fall
back into its original small groups, but the competition which
now depresses them would be replaced by emulation which ele-
vates them.
But there is an essential difference between the industrial in-
stitution and the other voluntary institutions which we have
been considering. A man can manage to live without belong-
ing to a family, a church or a political party, but he cannot live
without land and capital. Consequently he is subject to the own-
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614 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
ers of land and capital. On the other hand, the love of work
is not an original passion, like sexual love or religious faith,
but is an acquired affection produced by education. Now, co-
ercion is a factor in education, and it is also a necessary sub-
stitute where education has failed. Therefore, coercion should
not be wholly eliminated from industry. It rather should be
regulated and placed under the care of the state. Remember-
ing these essential differences, let us mention certain ways by
which the state has lessened or may lessen the coercion of
proprietors over proletarians. As to their effectiveness, opin-
ions differ.
First : Protection for wage earners, by prohibiting destruc-
tive competition of foreign labor, child labor, female labor and
overwork ; by security against old age, accidents and sickness ;
by security against unemployment, arbitrary discharge and
blacklist.
Second : Taxation of unearned incomes (ground rent, inher-
itances, etc.), thereby releasing labor and earned incomes, and
so increasing the supply of land and capital.
Third: A distinction between distributive and productive
industries. Distributive industries are those like highways and
currency, which serve the community best by unity and free
service, and which are capable of army organization. Pro-
ductive industries are farms and factories which serve best by
economy of production, and which require variety, subdivision
of labor and attention to details. Distributive industries are
essentially coercive because they control the access to markets.
Productive industries are voluntary because they depend upon
the love of work.
Fourth : With coercive control eliminated, business will rap-
idly become co-operative. Laborers will be admitted to part-*
nership with employers, just as wife has been admitted to part-
nership with husband, layman to partnership with priest, lords
and commons to partnership with king. This change is al-
ready taking place in those industries where powerful labor
unions are joined with powerful combinations of employers to
control the business.
Without stopping here for details, which would exceed my
present limits of space, let us summarize the ideals above pre-
sented. In the two institutions, political parties and business
corporations, there are two divergent phases which may be fol-
lowed. We may faithfully accept the theory that monopoly
is inevitable and perpetual and therefore that freedom will be
secured only through state ownership and operation. This
was the theory which prevailed in the reconstruction of the
coercive institution, the state. Or, we may look deeper into
the coercive factors which suppress the persuasive factors of
the institution and then proceed to extract those coercive fac-
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SOCIAL EVOLUTION 615
tors and annex them as functions of the state. This was the
theory which prevailed in the reorganization of the family and
the church. If we adopt the first policy in the case of the polit-
ical party, we will content ourselves with the secret ballot, civil
service reform and primary election reform, which retain the
boss, but attempt to make' him elective instead of self-elected,
But if we adopt the second policy we will proceed to the ref-
erendum and initiative by which the monopoly itself is disin-
tegrated and the party becomes a strictly voluntary and per-
suasive institution.
If we adopt the first policy in the case of the industrial insti-
tution, we will nationalize the trust by selecting officers of gov-
ernment for its officials. But if we adopt the second policy,
we will extract from the trust the coercive principles by which
it clubs wage-earners, competitors and consumers, and will re-
duce it from a coercive institution to a merely productive insti-
tution.
In either case the goal will not be reached except by par-
ticipation of working people in their proportionate share of
control over the legislative, administrative and judicial branches
of government.
New York. John R. Commons.
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The Socialist Movement in Great Britain
HE labor movement in Great Britain is a sort of pons
asinorum for socialists who go abroad to find out how
the world is getting along. Our conditions are spe-
cial ; we have an insular habit of mind ; we require a
great deal of understanding. The object of this paper is N to
point out some of the special characteristics of the labor move-
ment here, with a view to showing that, if we have a way of
our own for doing things, it is because we have special cir-
cumstances to deal with.
To begin with, no other country has a trade union movement
like ours. Commercial trade unionism has been inspired by
the men who led the socialist movement. English trade union-
ism has had no inspiration whatever beyond the simple convic-
tion that in making demands against masters, unity is strength.
Now and again the English trade unionist has been fired by
some enthusiasm for "a large movement" as during the sixth
decade of. the last century, but behind the enthusiasts there
have always been a solid mass of men lacking imagination, anx-
ious to grasp tightly the gains of the day before advancing to
realize a greater gain. The English trade union movement as
a whole has consequently stuck close to practical work — mean-
ing by practical that which gives results most readily. So close-
ly has it fixed its attention upon results that it has barely paused
to inquire how valuable they were. An aim that could be nick-
named Utopian was doomed. An average Englishman has a
considerable amount of assurance, but he flees from the ap-
proach of a New Jerusalem as a man flees from Satan. The
English trade union movement, then, instead of showing a
grasp of fundamental industrial economics and instead of lay-
ing hold upon a theory of social reconstruction under which the
wage-earner in his modern significance shall disappear, has
shifted its policy as the phases of industrial evolution have
changed. When machinery was being introduced, the unions
condemned machinery; when women's labor was being em-
ployed the unions tried to stop it ; when the market was rising
they attempted to force up wages or reduce hours. They were
playing a game of check or of see-saw ; they had no reconstruct-
ive ideas. The only glimmer of reconstructive effort they ever
616
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SOCIALIST MO VEMENT IN GREA T BRITAIN 617
had was when they added sick, out-of-work, death or other
forms of insurance to their activities.
Looking back over the whole movement, two distinct epochs
of policy seem to be marked off. Until about the end of the
fifth decade of the last century the unions were striving to check
the use of labor-saving machinery. The anti-machine policy
was succeeded by another which was forced upon the unions
rather than selected or discovered by them. A great demand
for labor was growing up and the abler trade union leaders saw
that their best move under the circumstances was to abandon
all attempts to regulate the way in which labor was to be em-
ployed — whether it wielded a hammer itself, or saw that a steam
engine was doing it properly — and strive so to organize the
supply of labor that it would make a good bargain with cap-
ital. The problem was one of bargaining ; the trade union was
an instrument by which the individual workman might approach
the possibility of making a really free contract. This policy
marked the period roughly dating between 1845-50 and 1880-90.
During the latter margin, trade union leader after trade union
leader began to recognize that the old policy was played out.
Whenever by a depression of trade, the sudden introduction of
new machinery, a protective combination of capital (whether it
be a federation or a fusion of independent firms) demand slack-
ens or supply loses its power to regulate the market, the Second
policy of trades unionism becomes futile. What has happened
is, that employers have seen that if capital would regulate its
demand for labor, labor could not regulate its own supply. This
is what is now happening. Trusts are being formed in some in-
stances, and in others the masters in whole trades, such as
engineering and building, are federating themselves in unions.
Those new conditions again demand a new trade union pol-
icy, and, let it be emphasized, the policy is being discovered
not deductively from general industrial principles, from com-
prehensive economic facts, but inductively by a process of ex-
periment. Some unions like the boilermakers and bedstead-
makers have actually entered the alliance of their employers
and have agreed upon scales of wages and profits ; others have
accepted a sliding scale arrangement by which profits and
wages move in automatic sympathy. But these experiments
are breaking down one after another, because they are unwork-
able. Their machinery, under one strain or other, goes out of
gear. The clearest headed of the trade unionists are abandon-
ing all hope of being able to rig what is called "the law of sup-
ply and demand" so that it may play into the hands of labor
in making a bargain, and are beginning to make their demands
on the ground of human and social right ; and these demands
are becoming known as a "physiological and moral minimum."
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618 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
But no sooner do active unionists think in this way than they
see that no "physiological and moral minimum" can be secured
until the trunk industries of the country are held by the com-
munity and used to promote communal ends rather than indi-
vidual gains.
At this point, two methods suggest themselves. The first is
that of co-operation — a movement which in this country has
also developed an existence separate from a social ideal. Great
efforts are beingmade at the present moment to get trade union-
ists committed to co-operative production, but as the society
which is pushing this matter has, quite naturally, associated
with it some of the bitterest enemies that trade unionism has,
it is not very likely to divert a great deal of trade union energy.
The second is the political method. This is gaining in favor
very rapidly. There has always been a tendency for trade
unions to rush into politics when pushed into a corner, but their
conception of political action has been as temporary and in-
sufficient as their industrial policy.
In this connection it may be of interest if I quote a paragraph
from the first annual report presented by the joint executive
committee of trade unions and socialist societies to the dele-
gates attending the conference on labor representation held in
Manchester last February :
"It is appropriate that the first annual report of this com-
mittee should refer briefly to the various attempts that have
been made to initiate a labor representation movement as an
adjunct to trade unionism. Immediately after the reform act
of 1868, which enfranchised working men in the boroughs, a
movement started, both inside and outside the trade union
ranks, demanding that an end should be put to the legal eriev-
ances which trade unions then suffered, by sending to the House
of Commons a body of trade union representatives. The Labor
Representation League, established for this purpose, was es-
sentially a trades union congress offshoot. It failed in its
efforts to get its candidates recognized by the managers of
either political party, and was forced into "three-cornered" con-
tests. A bye-election in 1869 was fought by Mr. George Odger
on behalf of the trade unionists. In 1870, and again in 1873,
the league had to split votes, and at the general election in 1874
it proposed to contest seventeen or eighteen constituencies.
Fourteen of its candidates went to the poll, and of these only
four were allowed a straight fight — A. Macdonald (Stafford);
T. Burt (Morpeth); S. Mottershead (Preston); R. Cremer
(Warwick). Ten were compelled to split votes — B. Pickard
(Wigan); G. Howell (Aylesbury); Henry Broadhurst (Wy-
combe) ; G. Potter (Peterborough) ; Halliday (Merthyr) ; Kane
(Middlesbrough); G. Odger (Southwark); Morris (Cricklade);
B. Lucraft (Finsbury); Walton (Stoke-on-Trent). The most
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
SOCIALIST MO VEMBNT IN GREA T BRITAIN 619
pressing of the legal disabilities were shortly afterward re-
dressed, and the Labor Representation League gradually dis-
appeared. Little more was heard of such a movement (except
amomjst the miners, who had returned two members to Parlia-
ment in 1874) until a new kind of pressure began to be felt by
trade unions — until the economic problem of capitalism took the
place of the legal problem of anti-trade union legislation. To-
wards the end of the eighties, owing to depression in trade and
the beginning of successful combinations amongst the employ-
ers, the attention of the trade unions was again turned towards
labor politics. The London dock strike in particular marks the
birth of the new political movement. The congress which met
in Belfast in 1893 resolved that the unions should combine to
form a paliamentary fund, but the parliamentary committee
had to report next year that only two unions had agreed to put
the resolution in operation. The matter had to drop for the
time being. In 1890 the Labor Electoral Association was
formed, but failed to impress the unions with the necessity for
its existence, and congress itself could not be induced to take
official action until 1859, when the railway servants' resolution,
which originated the present movement, was passed."
At last the trade unions are being driven to formulate an
economic policy of reconstruction and to adopt political meth-
ods. The movement has grown from within. Its existence does
not show so much the success of a propaganda, though the
Independent Labor Party — started in 1894 — has done specially
good work in drawing trade unionism on towards socialism.
It is the evolution of a method designed to protect the wage-
earner against the capitalist.
The new trade union method is bound to remain a little in-
definite for some time to come — until there is a break in pros-
perity and until a socialist policy in Parliament wins the con-
fidence of the rank and file of the trade unions. It would be a
mistake to force it prematurely into dogmas and shibboleths.
When a certain road is taken, certain goals must be reached,
and when British trade unionism is driven to politics and to for-
mulate demands for a labor representation which shall be in-
dependent of the non-labor political parties, it has entered a
road that has socialism at the end of it.
As a matter of fact, when we consider men apart from move-
ments, the best men amongst the trade unionists are socialists.
It is practically impossible to fill the secretaryship of an impor-
tant trade union now without appointing a member of the Inde-
pendent Labor Party to the office. Two such offices were va-
cant recently, and in both cases they were held previously by
men who had been active and bitter opponents of ours. The
societies, moreover, were, generally speaking, "old-fashioned"
societies — the boilermakers and the typographical association.
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620 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
And yet the new secretaries of both societies are members of
the Independent Labor Party. The secretary of the steel smelt-
ers has also become a convert of ours quite recently. There is
not an executive of any important trade union in the country
but has its group of socialists, mainly Independent Labor Party
men.
I have just quoted from a report presented by the labor rep-
resentation committee to a delegate meeting of members of
trade unions. This is the committee which was started from the
annual congress of trade unions in 1899. It did not get into
working order until April in last year, and in ten months, des-
pite much opposition from some of the more conservative
unions, it had a membership of 375,931 — 353,070 trade unionists
and 22,861 socialists ; and in addition a more or less duplicated
membership of trades councils amounting to 122,000.
The future of political trade unionism is largely in the hands
of this committee. The report from which I have quoted con-
tains another paragraph which, though long, may be again ex-
tracted as it puts as briefly as can be the work which the com-
mittee was able to do at the last general election.
"The abuse of constitutional power by which the govern-
ment plunged the country into an election in order to snatch
a hasty and unformed judgment from the electors, for its own
partisan ends, made it impossible for the committee to com-
plete its plan of campaign. The trade union candidatures, for
the lack of such an organization as is now being built up, were
specially backward, and were not so many as we should have
wished, nor as they would have been had the election been de-
layed for a few months.
"And yet, the labor representation committee's list fared
remarkably well. Two members of the committee actually won
seats for labor (the only victories which labor gained at the
election), and, in every case but one, where comparison with
1895 is possible, its candidates improved their polls. The votes
polled were 62,698 out of a total of 177,000. In ten cases the
local organizations responsible for the committee's candidates
were strong enough to keep one of the ordinary parties out
of the contest ; in the other five constituencies they had to fight
both parties. This favorable result is due, in no small measure,
to the existence of the committee, and its manifesto to the
electors in the constituencies where its candidates were run-
ning was signed by representatives of all the sections of the
labor movement. This is a happy augury for the future. Three
hundred and thirty thousand of these manifestoes were sup-
plied gratis to the committee's candidates. The following can-
didates were run by affiliated organizations and consequently
were supported by the committee :
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SOCIALIST MOVEMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN
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y
632 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
"These figures compare so favorably with other labor polls,
and with the general result of the election, that they must con-
vince every one that labor candidatures promoted by labor or-
ganizations have as good a chance of success as when they are
promoted by either of the old parties."
For the first time for many years the labor and socialist sec-
tions issued a united appeal and prominent trade union officials,
not quite socialists, identified themselves with prominent social-
ists who were candidates.
The work of organization is now being proceeded with in
likely labor constituencies. Special efforts are being made to
bring the trade unionists, socialists and co-operators into sym-
pathetic touch for political purposes. A probable outcome of
the present situation is that when the next election comes there
will be some score of the labor representation committee's can-
didates running in constituencies without liberal opposition and
at least a dozen ought to be returned to Parliament. Of these
nine should be convinced socialists.
/. Ramsay Mac Donald,
Hon. Sec. Labor Representation Committee.
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Straws
| HE causes of all phenomena are equally adequate."
Much has been said and written about the phenom-
ena of nature. It is, however, the purpose of this
article to call special attention to the phenomena of
human nature, which would probably come under the head of
social phenomena; also to look for the adequate causes of the
same.
If the above quotation be a truism, is it the part of good
common sense, or any explanation of the case to dogmatically
assert that "the reason the tramp doesn't work is that he is too
lazy?" How about laziness, anyway; is it a phenomena without
a cause? If so, will some "conservative," "irreproachable,"
"respectable" "citizen" of "high standing," "calm judgment,"
and "clear insight," please rise and explain the cause of the great
increase of that malady of late years. How comes it that this
nation's army of tramps is much greater in numbers, though
many times more expensive, than its standing army?
Those who persist in repeating that stale old chestnut about
the prime cause of poverty being indolence and intemperance,
are here invited to furnish us with an anaylsis of the two mal-
adies; iriental indolence and intoxication not to be considered
in the treatise; that would perhaps be asking too much.
We have quit our superstitions in part, for some generations
back; hence, if our watch ceases to work we are sure there is a
natural adequate cause, and what to do with it is a question
so simple that almost any child will find no difficulty in answer-
ing. But to the bourgeois wiseacre philanthropist, "the prob-
lem of what to do with the tramp is indeed perplexing," and be-
coming more and more so all the while. We ransack ancient,
medieval and modern superstition to discover the causes of
these various phenomena — especially those which disturb or
interest us most — and finally abandon our research, as hope-
lessly in the dark on the matter as when we begun. And yet we
have been reading the statement for 1800 years to the effect
that men do not gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles.
Our minds have been so clouded with superstition that we are
only just now beginning to appreciate the significance of such
quotations as the above and their bearing on the subject which
we shall presently take up.
Straws indicate the direction of the wind, and if we study
carefully the movements of the straws herein treated, we think
we shall surely find that they are wafted along by "tradewinds."
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624 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
It would be as well to begin at home. In our town a few of the
brightest women are partially ostracized from society because
forsooth "they will persist in dragging socialism into every-
thing." "We just simply can't allow this political talk in our
meetings." "I'd just like to ask her a few questions if it were
not for getting her started." Further we shall see that no one
does "drag in" socialism; that, on the contrary, socialism does
the dragging, and impels the few to entreat the many to "take
a thought and mend" and go and do likewise.
Perhaps the best thing the socio-religious world can do in this
matter is to resign itself to its fate, in the reflection that it is
"our manifest destiny" to rend the veil of the temple and turn
their play-party into a lyceum.
In our town there are perhaps a dozen of the male sex who
create more or less friction by "eternally talkin' socialism.*'
"Everything they see, hear, smell or taste reminds them of so-
cialism." (Nearly all roads lead some people to socialism, and
the number of such is continually growing larger.) "They make
me weary." "They don't know enough to let up when a fellow
is plum exhausted."
The foregoing are some of the unfriendly comments one
hears. Go to one of the three mercantile houses, one of the
two blacksmith shops or to the pharmacy in town and you stand
in great danger of becoming innoculated with the dread virus.
Go to the U. S. postoffice, and even that institution savors of
socialism, in spite of the fact that its master is a republican. And
we must not forget the outlying shingle mills which teach classes
in practical economics. And this reminds us not to overlook the
public schools, where socialism is creeping in, though as yet
inarticulate.
Now for another straw which the wind driveth about. For
several years past during the winter months, it has been the
custom of our town people to organize a literary society, which
took the form of a popular entertainment, consisting principally
of music, recitations, dialogues, readings, and once in a while
a light drama. Debating was also in order. But economics
has gradually been creeping in, and the result is that a motion
to make a chapter from Bellamy's "Equality," with free discus-
sion of questions involved, a part of each weekly programme,
was carried at our first meeting this season.
One more item. The most important church organization
in our town has changed preachers at least every twelve months
for the past five or six years, and each succeeding incumbent is
treated to a somewhat larger allowance of economic thought at
the hands of the cranks. For example, the good parson at the
Sunday evening service talks to the young people about "Suc-
cess,'' i. e., he rehashes that 19th century sermon we've all heard
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
STRA WS 6*5
over and over about energy, temperance and frugality. And in
the course of his discourse relates that inspiring incident in
which a bank, a pin and a new testament play the leading parts.
As a result an after meeting is held between the worthy min-
ister and one of the cranks, in which they both testify. Mean-
while another crank has hurried home to burn the midnight oil
in preparing a friendly criticism, soliciting an answer. The
same he mails to the preacher but receives no reply, which, how-
ever, is no ill omen, as we discover a little later, for the very
next socialist lecture in town is attended by our ecclesiastical
brother, where he gets a clearer understanding of the cause
and a kindlier feeling exists between all concerned.
Thus by this "ceaseless beat of thought upon the shores of
error" ministers are among the great multitude who are con-
tinually being induced to choose whom they will serve.
It will be noticed that I have cited no circumstance outside
my own immediate neighborhood; but the same thing, as all
who have observed the phenomena, will attest, is all the while
taking place in a greater or less degree throughout the whole
civilized world.
The "Daily Voice," of Chicago, national organ of the Pro-
hibition party, dated November 8, 1900, contains a very sug-
gestive editorial to which we could call special attention, partic-
ularly from those who are interested in sociology.
The editor in referring to "propaganda work says of the so-
cialist : "The fact that has impressed us most is this, wherever
you find a socialist you find an agitator; a man who makes it
one of the foremost things of his life to set people to thinking
along the lines he is interested in. Your socialist may be an
uneducated man, he may have no abilities as a public speaker;
perhaps he could not write an article to save his life; but he
finds something that he can do to persuade people to his way
of thinking. He learns to speak, he learns to debate; he devel-
ops the ability to write. He has read the great classics of his
cause. He has their arguments at his tongue's end, and goes
loaded for a discussion with every man he meets. No propa-
ganda has been more earnest, and scarce any more efficient. We
speak of these things to say to our readers the more pointedly,
why don't you become an enthusiast for prohibition? Why
don't you develop the power to speak and debate and write for
the cause? Did you make any speeches during the campaign?
Did you hold any curbstone discussions with a dozen or two of
your neighbors around you?"
Now socialists in general, we fe$l sure, will be obliged to the
editor for his remarks concerning them in spite of his sugges-
tin that our "views may be one-sided and fallacious." As to
the number of sides our cause has, a comparison with Prohibi-
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626 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
tion will not greatly embarrass us. And right here I would like
to predict that our cause will, in the coming four years, draw
comparatively more from the Prohibition party than from either
of the regular capitalist parties, because they are so wholly in
earnest, mentally capable and morally courageous.
It is not my purpose to treat the above editorial in detail, but
I do wish to make a few observations and answer his main query
from the standpoint of modern scientific socialism. From the
standpoint of casual observation the matter would seem to be
of small importance and I am strongly of the opinion that the
question was propounded without the slightest expectation of
ever receiving a real adequate answer; nevertheless it is part of
the phenomena, a significant straw.
Let us here refer to the quotation at the beginning of this
article, but change the wording so that it will read : "The cause
of every phenomenon is sufficiently adequate." Now this propo-
sition being axiomatic gives a key to the whole situation. Brief-
ly stated the prohibition movement has not sufficient cause back
of it to induce the average adherent to put forth an amount of
effort equal to that of the average socialist.
To be more explicit, let us quote from Heine: "We do not
take possession of our ideas but are possessed by them. They
master us and force us into the arena, where, like gladiators we
must fight for them." I do not contend that socialists are in-
herently better, more intelligent or energetic than others, but
that we are possessed by an idea great enough to compel us to
hold curbstone discussions, study the great classics of our cause
and develop ability toyfepeak, write and debate. Now by th»
time I trust the answer to our editor's problem has begun to be
apparent. Once let the socialist idea get possession of the
republican, democrat or prohibitionist and he will be no less
a propagandist than those of the socialist persuasion.
Capitalistic propaganda is carried on only by stump speakers
and the public press, while with socialism you are liable to take
it from any one who has it, as well as from observation and
reading; it being not only contagious but epidemic; for as the
editor has pointed out, every socialist is a propagandist. Prob-
ably not one prohibitionist in a hundred is a missionary in the
cause. Furthermore, that party had substantially the same rea-
son for its existence ten, fifteen or even twenty years ago that
it now has; whereas the metamorphosis of capitalism is contin-
ually provoking new socialist thought, and making independent
political action on the part of the exploited class, more and more
imperative.
Tea years ago the New England operative in the vortex of our
industrial system, doubtless had sufficient reason for taking an
independent line of political action. Five years ago those same
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
STRAWS 627
operatives had many more reasons for such conduct, and many
more wage laborers were caught by the inflowing tides of capi-
talism and made to see that their political interests were no
longer identical with those of their economic masters; on the
contrary, that the interests of those two classes (under capital-
ism) were becoming all the while more and more opposed, and
this year of our Lord 1901 brings still many more of us to a
realizing sense of where our class interests lie.
Thus this little distinction between the causes of these two
political effects, viz: Prohibition and Socialism, becomes an
item of no small importance.
As we go over and investigate, the molehill becomes a moun-
tain. Our recent national election certainly verified the claim
made by the socialists that the political and hence economic
triumph of their cause depends primarily on the class-conscious-
ness of the disinherited. And this mental state develops with
the logic of industrial events. For instance in mechanical Mas-
sachusetts, socialists are mostly from the ranks of the factory
operatives, where they have had the philosophy of* the class
struggle, of which they are thoroughly cognizant, practically
presented to them from their youth up; consequently they polled
a very respectable vote and sent two of their number to the
legislature.
Let us investigate a little further along this line. Someone
has said that "thoughts are things." Now then, as to the ma-
chine; the original object of course was that it should turn out
only fabrics of one kind or another; various commodities repre-
senting as much surplus value as possible. But happily we have
discovered that it is now already turning out an idea that is
"possessing" and "mastering" the "man under the machine"
and "forcing him into the arena" where he is fulfilling his mis-
sion, fighting humanity's noble, good fight, for the greatness
of the cause constraineth him.
On the outcome of this world's battle depends a more normal
society, and on a more normal society depends the abolition of
the liquor traffic. The ship of state rides not on the ebb and
flow of enthusiasm for a single phase of human advancement,
but rather upon the ceaseless onward ocean-tides of industry;
i. e., the social trend is dependent on the industrial trend.
But to return to consciousness, that is to class-consciousness;
let us contrast the east with the west which has not made nearly
so substantial a showing, simply because capitalistic industry
has not yet developed far enough to create a class-conscious
state of mind in the proletariat of that section; or we might have
gone on to say that the mechanism of industry in the west is as
yet too imperfect to turn out a real full blown economic idea.
We further maintain that evolution is the power behind the
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
028 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
throne in the phenomena of industry, and that this same irresisti-
ble, inevitable, industrial evolution is gradually permeating the
whole social fabric with socialist thought; and that, regardless
of whether it be distasteful to this one or that one. "First the
blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear."
The foregoing is a brief outline of what seems to be capital-
ism's method of mustering and mobilizing the forces for its final
overthrow; i. e., the means of ics own extermination.
The "blade" we may say is typical of, or corresponds with
the phenomena treated under the heading of this article — straws.
The "ear," the epoch of class consciousness, and the "full corn,"
the period of political solidarity of the capitalist class on the one
hand and the dispossessed class on the other.
It will be a war of ballots not bullets, and thus by sheer force
of numbers, the citadel of capitalism is bound to fall. First a
murmur and a query, then protest and investigation; then the
great powerful political battering ram is turned against our in-
dustrial Jericho and its walls begin to crumble. As louder grows
the noise and tumult from without, within the revel ceases, the
prince of mountebanks comes forth and at the climax of a grand
awful peroration exclaims, "What means this hammering at the
gates of Capitalism?" And the morning of the new century
answers that the real Democracy is now fitted to survive.
"Legion."
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Mind and Socialism
Motto: It is not the conscious mind of man that determines the form of his being,
but, vice versa, the social form of his being that determines the conscious action of his
mind.— Karl Marx. Preface to " Critique of Pol. Economy.
HEN Marx, in the stillness of the night, concentrated
his powerful mind on the thought quoted above, intent
on his life's purpose of forging the mental weapons
for the emancipation of the proletarian mind from the
baneful influence of capitalistic teaching, he could hardly antic-
ipate that some of his latter-day followers would make his
thought the cornerstone for such arguments as the following :
"If it is not the conscious mind of man that determines the
form of his being, but quite the reverse, then it would follow
that capitalistic society must grow into socialism as the out-
come of the free play of economic forces, without the interven-
tion of the conscious social mind, as embodied in the socialist
party platform."*
"The historical merit of Karl Marx, which has immortalized
his name, is that he has shown that capitalistic society is grow-
ing into socialism, whether we like it or not, by force of economic
development."!
Such attempts to subvert the logic of the fundamental prin-
ciples on which the socialist movement is based have lately ap-
peared on our side of the "great pond," after the advocates of
this new doctrine had met an ignominious defeat in Europe.
Here, as they did over there, they shift uneasily from one sub-
ject to another when confronted by opposition. Here, as there,
they seek refuge in pettifogging when their stock in trade of
arguments is exhausted. And if nothing else will avail, they
try to impeach the value of the arguments brought forth by
the defenders of the "class struggle" by hinting darkly at the
influence of theologic dogmas, this mummified bugaboo of a
bygone era.
These and similar methods are necessary attributes of argu-
ments directed against beliefs and hypothetical conceptions
which they impute to us, but which we do not hold. It is a
good way of biasing the clear judgment of the readers; but
whether used intentionally or only as the result of illogical de-
ductions from our reasoning, it can hardly be recommended as
a good way of proving the strength of the position defended
by such methods.
•Marxist. Int. See. Rev. , Oct., 1900; page 225.
tMarxist Int. Soc. Rev., March, 1901; page 582.
029
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Where have we attempted to fetter the freedom of scientifia
investigation? Have not we rather advised Marxist to investi-
gate a little further by recommending the perusal of other
works written by Marx?
The spirit of proletarianism is as far removed from religious
sectarianism as proletarian socialism is from state socialism.
This spirit will be the "bull in the china shop" of a frail philos-
ophy that would represent us as the helpless victims of blind
forces, that would stamp socialist propaganda as folly and that
would ridicule the idea of a "class struggle," our one and only
guiding star in the desolate wilderness of capitalistic economics.
I propose to show —
I. That neither Marx nor any eminent "class-conscious" so-
cialist after him ever shared Marxist's fatalistic view of the
growing of society into socialism as the outcome of purely
economic development, and
II. That the mind of man plays a very important part in
the evolution of society.
I. THE ECONOMIC SIDE OF THE QUESTION.
Marx as well as the prominent representatives of class-con-
scious socialism in all countries have always held that the
course of economic evolution must logically lead to a revolu-
tion. Not the brutal and blind revolution of a savage mob-
as Marxist would fain represent our view — but the conscious
application of legal means by an economically and politically
organized proletariat.
"Along with the constantly diminishing number of the mag-
nates of capital," says Marx,* "who usurp and monopolize all
advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass
of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but
with this too grows the revolt of the working class — a class
always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized
by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production
itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode
of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with
it and under it. Centralization of the means of production and
socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become
incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument
is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property
sounds. The expropriators are expropriated."
Does Marx think it will be a "violent revolution?"* No.
For a little further on he continues :
"The transformation of scattered private property, arising
from individual labor, into capitalist private property is, na-
turally, a process incomparably more protracted, violent and
difficult than the transformation of capitalistic private property,
•Capital, Chapt. XXXII, page 487.
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MIND AND SOCIALISM 681
already practically resting on socialized production, into social-
ized property. In the former case we had the expropriation of
the mass of the people by a few usurpers ; in the latter we have
the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people."
We see that we have passed the worst stage of the evolu-
tion, when the concentration of capital has become a fetter on
the mode of production. Even Marxist admits that "capital-
ism has long since crossed the danger line which separates pri-
vate property from public ownership."* Therefore I am at a
loss to explain his "Fourth of July pyrotechnics" at our idea
of social revolution.
What is there Utopian in Marx's conception of this stage of
economic evolution? We don't see it. Neither did Engels,
who wrote in 1886 :f
"The sighed-for period of prosperity will not come ; as often
as we seem to perceive its heralding symptoms, so often do
they again vanish into air. Meanwhile, each succeeding winter
brings up afresh the great question, "what to do with the un-
employed" ; but while the number of the unemployed keeps
swelling from year to year, there is nobody to answer that ques-
tion; and we can almost calculate the moment when the un-
employed, losing patience, will take their own fate into their
own hands."
What is the only hope for avoiding a social tragedy accord-
ing to Engels ?
To listen to the voice of a man, "whom study led to the
conclusion that the inevitable social revolution might
be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means."J
In replying to the criticisms directed against what Barth
called the "economic conception of history" due to the influence
of Marx, Engels wrote in 1890 :|| "We had to emphasize the
dominating principle — the economic side of the question — which
was not admitted by our opponents. In doing so we did not
always find time, space or opportunity to give due recognition
to the oilier factors contributing to the general result."
And a little later he makes this point still clearer :% "There
are innumerable forces, crossing and recrossing one another,
an infinite group of parallelograms of forces. These result in
the historical event. The latter, again, may be regarded as the
product of a power that is, as a whole, acting unconsciously and
involuntarily. For every one is hindering that which every one
else is striving to effect, and the result is such as no one wished
to obtain."
The same thought is again found in another letter, written
•Marxist, Int. Soo. Rev M October, 1900; page 825.
tPreface to Capital.
tlbid.
IFrederlc Engels. Letter of 1800, publ. in u Der Sozialistisohe Akademiker," Oct., 1895
1 1bidem.
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by Engels in 1894:* "Political, judicial, philosophical, religious,
literary, artistic and any other development is founded on eco-
nomic evolution. But all these factors react on one another
and on their economic foundation."
That Liebknecht shared the views of Marx and Engels on
this subject, is well known. In the "Gotha Program" of the
German Social Democratic Party, which gives expression to
Liebknecht's convictions, we find the role assigned to the mind
defined in the following manner :
"The liberation of labor demands the transformation of the
means of production into the common property of society and
the associative regulation of the collective labor with general
employment and just distribution of the proceeds of labor.
The emancipation of labor must be the work of the laboring
class, opposed to which all other classes are only a reactionary
body. . . .
In order to accomplish our object we must organize our-
selves. r f
As to the position of Kautsky on this question, let his article
on "Trades Unions and Socialism" in the present issue of the
International Socialist Review speak for itself.
Bernstein, who finds such great favor in the eyes of Marxist,
supports this position by his own testimony.
"Of course," he writes, "I do not assert that Marx and En-
gels have at any time overlooked the fact that other than eco-
nomic factors are exerting their influence on the course of
historic events .... Whoever wishes to apply the materialistic
conception of history to-day, is obliged to use it in its devel-
oped, not in its original form. That is to say, full recognition
must be accorded to the development and influence of produc-
tive forces and conditions as well as to juridical and ethical
conceptions, historical and religious traditions of each epoch,
influences of geographical and other natural relations. Hu-
man character and mental abilities naturally belong to these
causes ."%
This idea is more fully developed a little further on: "The
more other than purely economic forces bring their influence
to bear on social life the more variable becomes the effect of
so-called historic necessity. . . .On one hand appears the grow-
ing insight into the laws of evolution and more especially of
economic evolution. On the other hand we perceive, partly
as the cause of this insight, partly as its consequence, an in-
creasing ability to direct the economic development." *[[
♦Publ. In "Der SozialiBtische Akademiker," October. 1896.
tLlobknecht. Socialism: What it is and what it seeks to accomplish. Translated by
May Wood Simons. Page 28. Kerr & Co., Chicago.
JEd. Bernstein. Die Voranssetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sotlal
demokratie. (Stuttgart, 1899. J. H. W. Diets, Nachf.) Page 7.
llbidem, page 10.
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MIND AND SOCIALISM 638
In plain American, at present we cannot absolutely deter-
mine "the form of our being," but we can modify it by our influ-
ence.
Comrade Herron recently maintained this position in his
famous speech at Central Music Hall, September 29, 1900:*
"Hitherto, what we call society has been the evolution of blind
forces which man did not understand and could not control.
But we are reaching that moment when man will become the
evolutor as well as the evolved; when man will become con-
scious of himself as the decretal and creative force in evolu-
tion."
So far are all these men removed from the idea of fatalistic
resignation to purely economic factors that they devote all
their energies to the organization of the proletariat and to
spreading the doctrine of "class-consciousness." If the social
question could be solved by the agency of economic forces
alone, then socialist propaganda would be folly indeed. But
it cann6t. Without the influence of socialist principles the evo-
lution of society would end in a howling chaos of destruction
and murder. Nothing will restrain and guide the penned-up
passions of the oppressed masses but the scientific truth of
socialism.
Let us look around and ascertain whether the concentration
of capital in the United States has not reached a point when
the signs predicted by Marx become visible, and the integu-
ment of private ownership may be burst asunder with less diffi-
culty than the process of concentration offered.
We cannot judge our conditions by European examples, for
our industrial development is far ahead of the European.
Therefore no resolutions fitting the condition of the working-
class in Europe, no matter how "plain and businesslike" the
language of such documents may be, will give us any clew to
the policy we shall have to pursue in our country. We must
decide for ourselves.
Compare Marx's description of the critical moment with the
present state of affairs in America. Do not his words convey
the most accurate description of the situation that any eye-
witness could give? Look at practically the entire railroad sys-
tem of the United States combined under one management.
Observe how the control of the industries supplying coal, steel,
grain, sugar, cattle, glue, kerosene, gas, electricity is passing
into fewer and fewer hands almost from month to month. Can
concentration go much farther?
Mark how the number of unemployed increases at the same
time. Watch the growth of misery, slavery, degradation and
exploitation. Think of a man and his two half-grown girls
•Why I Am a Socialist. PubL by Chas. H. Kerr & Co., Chicago. Page 19.
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684 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
earning together 60 cents for twelve hours of night work in a
Southern cotton mill; Go to the "Western Electric" in Chi-
cago and see college graduates working at menial tasks for
$7 per week. Travel through the vast regions of the South
where farming on a small scale has become unprofitable and
convince yourself of the abject poverty of the agricultural pop-
ulation. Read the regulations and restrictions to which the
wage slaves must submit or face starvation, crime and the pen-
itentiary. They can no longer eat, drink or wear what they
like nor live where they choose.
The state will socialize these industries, says Marxist. But
the state — that is Hanna. And if Hanna has the power to
promise the next presidential election to Teddy,* who will force
him to dissolve the trust that sustains him?
Since the Republican party will not, therefore, reduce the
hours of labor for the "working cattle" or give them higher
wages, and since the Democratic party is hopelessly reactionary,
it is obvious that only the socialist party will be willing and
able to do something for the progress of the world, which is
now hampered by the Republican party.
Is it likely that socialists will be inclined to adopt state social-
ism when they ran get the "real thing"? What is there in
state socialism to recommend it ?
"State socialism," answers Marxist, "means primarily public
ownership or public control of monopolies for the benefit of
the consumer."! Shades of Billy and Teddy! What do you
think* of this ? You know very well that state socialism means
primarily control of national resources for the benefit of those
who contribute liberally to the campaign fund of the Republi-
can party.
Instance the postal service paying millions into the spacious
pockets of the transportation trust ; the army and navy, a field
that can tell startling stories of exploitations by pets of Re-
publican party managers ; the public school funds appropriated
to political purposes and the employes of this "socialized" ser-
vice, either instruments of capitalists or relegated to obscurity ;
heavy tariffs for the benefit of industries that have long out-
grown the stage where they needed protection, and subsidies
for steamship companies that could be better off by strict busi-
ness management. And the consumer somewhere in the dim
distance vaguely wondering where he will come in — that is
state socialism!
Are we going to perpetuate such a monstrous "civilization,"
when we can put society on the just basis of collectivism?
•Marxist, Int Soc. Rev., March, 1901; page 581.
tMarxtet, Int. Soe. Rev., March, 1901; page 687.
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MIND AND SOCIALISM 685
"Ah, when" says Marxist. "This is where you fellows are
Utopian."
Are we?
"Mankind always sets to itself only such problems as it is
able to solve; for upon close analysis it always appears that
the problem itself is raised only then when the material condi-
tions requisite for its solution are already in existence, or at
least in process of formation."*
Now, here we have a state of society when centralization
has almost reached the stage where one man can control all
the nation's means of production. On the other hand, the sen-
timent in favor of socialism has been growing in all strata of
society to such an extent that we may expect at any moment to
see the movement assuming gigantic proportions. The prob-
lem is upon us. The moment has arrived for the proletarian
mind to enter its field and reap its harvest. The iron is hot,
and we must strike it.
II. THE INTELLECTUAL SIDE OF THE QUESTION.
Here is the point where we are justified in resenting a philos-
ophy that would undo all the patient labor of fifty years of so-
cialist agitation. Now more than ever it is necessary to forget
our petty differences, if we mean business, to unite and to go
to work in earnest. If we would not prepare the masses now
for the inheritance into which they will by all appearances soon
come, then the chance of our life will be missed. But no class-
conscious socialist thinks of missing it. The handwriting on
the wall is too plain.
"It is beyond doubt," writes Vandervelde, "that the concen-
tration realized by trusts, while increasing the cohesion of em-
ployers and swelling the army of unemployed, weakens to that
degree the resistive power of trade unions." f
Let the members of trade unions realize that industrial con-
centration is rendering the power to strike practically of no
avail, and they will swell the army of class-conscious prole-
tarians to such an extent that our political strength will at once
become formidable. Self-interest will then draw over to us all
those who do not derive any immediate benefit from their ad-
herence to the Republican party.
It depends on us to bring the matter before the people in so
clear a light that no doubt about the correctness of our prin-
ciples can remain. The way is prepared.
Read the signs of the times. Is it not significant that a mag-
azine like the North American Review is publishing articles
♦Man, Preface to "Critique of Political Economy."
tE. Vandervelde. Collectivism and Industrial Evolution. Translated by Charles H.
Kerr, Chicago, 1901.
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636 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
with socialist tendencies? Does it not matter that country
papers all over the land are beginning to make socialist quota-
tions a regular part of their columns ? Is it nothing that Her-
ron finds thousands of enthusiastic followers, eager to listen
to him every Sunday ? Has it not a deep meaning when young
women leave their studies to spread the gospel of socialist
brotherhood? Will it not change the world when sweet little
tots, all unconscious of the deep emotions they stir in the
breasts of men, sing on their walk to school :
Tho' we wield nor spear nor sabre,
We, the sturdy sons of labor.
Helping ev'ry man his neighbor.
Shrink not from the fight.
See our homes before us 1
Wives and babes implore us !
So firm we stand in heart and hand
And swell the dauntless chorus:
Men of labor, young or hoary.
Would ve win a name in story ?
Strike for home, for life, for glory,
Justice, Freedom, Right !
Yes, it will indeed make a great difference whether such
manifestations are part of our public life or not.
In fifty years, seven millions of class-conscious socialists,
clasping hands around the world, have grown out of the old
Utopian Communist Club. In as many months we may see the
number of socialists grow to the same figure in the United
States, as a logical and unavoidable result of an unexpectedly
rapid concentration of the means of production.
May those who still consider such a view as Utopian remem-
ber that the "utopia of to-day often becomes the reality of to-
morrow." The unexpected may happen that the proletarian
mind, stirred up from its customary stupor by some unforeseen
event, will suddenly awake to a consciousness of its suprem-
acy. Let us be prepared to guide it so that it will obliterate the
capitalist integument of private ownership, declare the practi-
cally socialized means of production collective property and
proceed to organize the mode of distribution on collectivist
principles.
E. Untermann.
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The Charity Girl
By Caroline H. Pemberton, Author of "Stephen the Black/' "Your Little
Brother James/' Etc.
CHAPTER III.
ARTHA McPHERSON was causing trouble to the
matron and managers of "St. Agnes' Holy House";
Julian's presence was needed there to quell the in-
subordinate outcast. This was the news that greeted
him the following morning. In the afternoon he went out
to the institution. Its managers were in friendly co-operation
with the Association for Sociological Research.
He was led upstairs to a large apartment filled with cots and
young women holding small bundles in their arms sitting be-
side the cots. Martha sat apart with her babe on her lap.
"We've had to keep her from the rest to prevent contam-
ination," the matron whispered; "she's the worst we've got —
shameless to a degree that makes me blush. Yes, sir ! at my
age and with all I've saw and knowed of the sinfulness of the
world it makes me blush to behold her!"
Julian, glancing at the lady's round, purple face and huge
head growing out of immense shoulders, vaguely wondered
if he should indeed attribute her chronic floridness to a too
prolonged contemplation of the frail feminine humanity gath-
ered under that roof.
"What has Martha done?" he asked.
"I'll give you a sample ; she'll show herself off quick enough.
Just take a seat. Martha, this is the gentleman from the good
society that has looked after you like a loving parent since
you was took away by the 'Croolty' from your first parents
that misused you so dreadful."
"They didn't misuse me," muttered the girl sullenly.
"They didn't ? Not when they spent all their money on drink
and gave you nothin' to eat and no clothes to put on your
back?"
"That warn't misusin'," explained the Magdalen desperately.
"Pappy was out o' work, and me mammy 'd drink jes' to keep
up her sperrits. I've been misused worse since I left 'em —
abused more than they ever done. I'd go back right to-mor-
row if I knowed where they was."
The matron shot a pleased glance at Julian.
"Now, you see the gratitude that's in her? But that ain't
what we come to talk about. Martha, this here gentleman
687
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688 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
wants to know what we want to know ; he's taken the occasion
to come on that errand and he can't do no more for you till
he knows all them particulars that you're holding back in your
wicked heart. Now, I want you to confess to him the whole
truth. I want you to open that heart of yours and let the light
of the Lord Jesus shine into it for just this one brief moment.
Don't you know Him and this here gentleman is standin' to-
gether an' knockin' at the door of that wicked heart o' yourn ?"
Julian considered whether he would dispute this representa-
tion of the Teacher of Men conspiring with himself to further
the ends of a vulgar prosecutor of the defenceless, but he
decided to await further developments.
"There ain't nothin' to confess," replied the girl stubbornly.
"There, sir — that's all the answer we get to our pleadings.
Why, you wouldn't believe the kindnesses that's been showered
on her! Every one of our managers has been here a-pleadin'
with her in turn. They come rollin' up in their carriages and
a-rustlin' up in their silks and satins and their furs and velvets
to waste their valuable time in this here sinful room, when they
might be enjoyin' theirselves at their afternoon teas and re-
ceptions! One sweet, religious lady, she got down on her
knees on this very floor and prayed and sang two hymns by
her side. But did she get out of her the name of that there
child's father? Not a bit of it — no more than you will now,
sir!"
Julian was about to end the conversation by disclaiming in-
dignantly any share of curiosity on the subject, when his atten-
tion wa^ directed to Martha's face. She sat straight in her
chair with glazed eyes fixed on the blank, unpainted wall,
Her head was raised; her expression had frozen into a kind
of petrified horror, as if she were looking straight at some
awful object. Had the mention of her child's father raised a;
fearful apparition?
The matron laid a fat hand on Julian's sleeve. "Now you
see it," she whispered triumphantly — "the look we've all been
gettin' !" She raised her voice and addressed the girl threaten-
ingly, "You brazen-eyed creature! We've been castin' our
pearls before such as you long enough ! This gentleman's got
the power to inflict proper punishment and he ain't goin' to
take the lies from your mouth that — "
"Woman — be silent!" Julian turned upon her with a voice
of command; he ordered her sternly and briefly to withdraw.
"I wish to speak to this girl alone." He arose from his chair
and faced the astounded matron without the shadow of an
apology in his manner. She gasped for breath, her voluble
speech failing her in such an extraordinary crisis. With a
gesture of rage and consternation, she fled from the room.
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THE CHARITY GIRL 689
Julian turned to Martha. She was no longer staring at the
wall, but was bending over her child devotedly. Her expres-
sion had utterly changed.
"What do you call the little fellow?" Julian asked as he
leaned forward to touch the child's hand.
"His name is Tahmmy — an' it's Jimmy, too. Tahmmy-
James. That's his name. There was the two of 'em, — but
they're gone now."
"There were two," repeated Julian, bewildered. "Two
what?"
"Two boys — my bruwers — Tahmmy an' Jimmy. Their real
names was Thomas an' James. The Cruelty got 'em. They
was put away in a orphans' home. I guess they're dead now.
Tahmmy wouldn't live long in a orphans' home. He didn't
want to be no orphan, but he was took an' made one — him an'
Jimmy — an' me, too."
"I never knew you had brothers." Julian hung his head
over the incomplete knowledge of the various associations that
had exercised such omnipotent control over this young crea-
ture's destiny. If they had known of the existence of the broth-
ers, they had failed to pass it on.
"Could I find 'em, do you s'pose, if I was to go an' ask at
all them houses where they has boy orphans an' look 'em over
an' p'int 'em out to them as has 'em in charge — supposin' they
ain't dead ? I'd know 'em wiv their hair cut off quick enough !
Tahmmy's got eyes like this here baby. You could tell they
was all to one fam'bly. Look at my baby's eyes." She held
the infant, who was now aroused from his slumbers, towards
Julian, her pale young face full of pride and motherliness.
"The bittern standing in solitary possession of the 'waste
places and the pools of water' might make a more appropriate
show of family pride," thought Julian. He expressed his ap-
preciation of the baby's eyes.
"He had eyes that looked like he was talkin' back to the
angels in heaven — Tahmmy had. But Jimmy was born with
just common eyes. I darsn't call my baby after Tahmmy an'
not after him too, 'cause Jimmy was that jealous o' Tahmmy
he'd s'pose I did it to spite 'im. I never made a pin's diff'rence
'tween 'em, but it's Tahmmy I seen always in my dreams after
he was put away — lookin' white an' sorrowful. I used to wake
up cryin' from sich dreams; but I don't have 'em any more
since this here one's come. I 'member when Tahmmy was a
baby like this here one. He's a-goin' to be Tahmmy right over
ag'in. Mebbe he's sent a-purpose? Why did them dreams
stop all to onct without he was sent a-purpose?" Martha
turned her tear-laden, colorless eyes full upon Julian.
It was certainly best to pass over the inquiry. "I will try to
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find out what has become of your brothers ; but now we must
decide about the baby and how you can manage to support it."
Martha looked cautiously around. "They want me to give
him away, that's what they want. Some would be glad to be
rid of 'im — but I ain't one o' that kind. I love my beautiful
baby." She kissed him tenderly. "They ask me every day
who he looks like. Why, who is there for him to look like
but me — without it's Tahmmy? Just as if he had two parents
like other folks!"
Was she merely protecting herself — as a flower shuts up its
petals in the pelting rain ? She was a simple creature — a mere
child. Something very like innocence looked out of her eyes.
She seemed to Julian to be obeying a mysterious, all-powerful
instinct which forbade her contemplating for a second the evil
that had surrounded her. She would live only in the pres-
ent. She would not look into that degrading background.
When forced to do so, it froze her young soul into the blank
horror which he had witnessed in her eyes.
He moved swiftly to the conclusion that she should not re-
main another hour under that roof. The door opened to admit
the matron, who came forward snorting. Julian stated his de-
cision briefly. She poured forth a cataract of angry words.
"My lady managers will be told, sir, how their representa-
tive has been treated by the person wrongfully called a gen-
tleman! Eleven matrons in sixteen years has been put in
charge of this institution, the board o' managers havin' been a-
strivin' and a-strugglin' in vain to obtain a lady of my experi-
ence and my respectability, which they was unable to do until
I consented to sacrifice my worldly prospects and accept their
paltry salary for the good of these poor creatures here below,
an' the hope of a reward in heaven ; and when I tell them that
I've been called 'a woman' to my face, sir — "
Julian's wits wandered during this oration ; he was trying to
decide whether he saw before him Mrs. Bumble or Mrs. Squeers
in the flesh. He repeated blandly his former statement: "I
wish to remove the girl. Be kind enough to get her and the
child ready to leave at once."
"The child stays here," said the official, stamping her foot
and folding her arms defiantly. "You can take the girl, but the
babe belongs to the institution."
"I fail to understand," murmured Julian, looking away. He
thought it extraordinary that a board of refined women should
retain such a woman as this in a position of authority. And
did not her eleven predecessors only emphasize the capacity of
these "boards" for hideous blundering? He could not
bear to look at this preposterous and terrible per-
sonage. Her vulgar outlines . only remotely suggested the
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THE CHARITY GIRL 641
coarseness of the spiritual fiber within, but they actually hurt
his eyes; he turned them away in obedience to an instinct of
delicacy — an exaggerated deference to her sex — which would
not betray all the disgust that was mirrored in his soul. But
the august lady moved herself into the direct range of his vision.
"It's in the by-laws, sir ! In consideration of the care, nurs-
ing and attention given to the inmates, it is resolved that the
legal control of their offspring belongs to the board of man-
agers who hereby constitute themselves guardians of all chil-
dren born in this institution' !"
She recited these words with gleaming eyes, and finished with
a lunge of her head like an angry bull.
"Both ridiculous and illegal," observed Julian coolly. "I
shall remove Martha and the child immediately. Get your
things on, Martha."
The girl rose with a frightened air and moved with falter-
ing steps toward the door.
"Give me the child !" commanded the matron sternly.
"I'll take it," interposed Julian audaciously, holding out his
arms. Martha laid the babe against his shoulder and disap-
peared. Julian sat down, holding the child awkwardly. He
turned crimson, conscious of the absurdity of the situation.
The matron smiled scornfully and continued her oration. It
passed rapidly into vulgar abuse and insinuation.
He was thankful that Martha returned promptly, tying the
faded ribbons of an old woolen hood under her chin; a thin,
shabby shawl hung over her right arm. Julian asked for a
heavier wrap.
"If you choose to break the rules of the institution and insult
her who is the head of it, you can all go out just as you came
in," was the vicious reply.
The two culprits descended the wide stairway, followed by
the matron's mocking laughter. Their exit was hasty and un-
dignified; at the last they had all the appearance of fugitives
fleeing from a justifiable prosecution.
Julian was obliged to wrap the infant in his overcoat to pro-
tect it from a penetrating wind. Hurriedly they caught a street
car. Undoubtedly they were a curious looking pair, and many
eyes were directed towards them as they sat side by side.
Julian resisted a strong temptation to take a seat at a distance.
He supposed that they passed for a family group, notwith-
standing that Martha's appearance was strongly suggestive of
the poor-house. The cropped head and short skirt exagger-
ated the young matron's distressing youthfulness, and surprised
comments were audible among the passengers.
The office was not reached until after 5 o'clock. Unfor-
tunately, only Elizabeth was there writing, the other agents
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having gone home. He would have to depend on Elizabeth's
aid in disposing of Martha and the babe for the night.
Elizabeth raised her head and took a long look at Martha's
forlorn figure. Her face assumed a peculiar rigidity. Martha
looked back stolidly, her features slowly hardening into a sim-
ilar expression.
"I guess you're one of the waifs," she observed in a high
thin voice, after a prolonged stare at Elizabeth.
The young clerk drew back panic-stricken. She turned to-
ward Julian.
"We're all alike, she thinks — everybody thinks 1 I will not
stay here ; I will not be a waif all my life 1" She arose in "her
excitement and stood against the wall facing Julian. Her little
figure was swelling with anger.
Julian went over to her. "You are looking across an im-
measurable gulf," he said in a low voice. "I am sorry ; I might
have been a waif — but I cannot be a woman — and these two
need a woman's hand."
Elizabeth glanced up into his face. Theh she looked straight
at Martha, her face growing solemnly, vaguely sympathetic.
"I hope you will do something to make her look like other
people," Julian added imploringly.
Elizabeth held out her hand. The young mother arose and
followed without a word. As they reached the head of the
stairs, Julian called after them :
"I am hoping you will give her a frock with lots of trim-
ming on it, and a hat with feathers and flowers, and — bright
blue ribbons."
Elizabeth laughed silently in the darkness of the stairway.
It was well known in the office that the board of managers
had prohibited feathers and flowers for waifs, after discussing
the subject at one special and two adjourned meetings, with
sessions of three hours each. It was an accepted principle
among them that the longer a subject was discussed the sound-
er was the conclusion reached.
Julian opened letters and wrote busily at his desk until he
heard steps descending the stairs. He looked up to inspect
the work of Elizabeth's hands as Martha entered the room.
She was arrayed in a neat brown dress. The transformation
was startling. Elizabeth followed with an armful of antiquated
hats and bonnets.
"Trimmed with velvet," she murmured briefly, pointing to
the brown dress.
"She gimme it, because we're both waifs," cried Martha joy-
fully. -Elizabeth nodded gravely.
'We're both waifs," she repeated in a low voice.
Julian looked at her inquiringly. There was something odd
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about her appearance. Her trim little figure was lost in a
mass of black cashmere.
"She gimme her dress !" cried Martha with increasing enthu-
siasm, her pale eyes fixed upon Elizabeth.
Julian continued to scrutinize Elizabeth. A wave of color
swept over her face. She looked down abashed.
"An old lady left the Association five black dresses. There's
nothing else up sUirs. I know it's too big — " She pulled at
the quaint sleeves with her fingers.
"It's very old fashioned!" cried Julian, laughing.
Elizabeth planted a battered hat on Martha's head, and re-
placed it quickly with a gigantic bonnet. The effect was ter-
rific. She tried them all, and at last gave up with an hysterical
laugh.
"There's mine ; she can take it — but there's no blue ribbon."
She clasped her hands in confusion.
Julian looked at the little brown turban with its waving
plumes. It was hanging from a nail on the wall. It looked ex-
actly like Elizabeth. He took it down and handed it to her.
"Put on your hat and go with this child to some store where
you can buy a decent article." He placed a bank note in her
hand. "Buy a frock, too, and take yours back."
"It's her's now," said Elizabeth immovably*
"Buy another for yourself then."
Elizabeth turned away quickly and began tying on the baby's
bonnet. She helped Martha with her hood and shawl, drew
on her own coat, picked up a bundle and steered Martha out
of the door with a resolute air.
Julian saw them depart, and then hastened to his boarding
house, feeling tired and discouraged.
Denning greeted him with cordiality. "I've secured for you
an invitation to the Charity Ball to-night," he said brightly,
"and I've left a pile of white neckties on your bureau."
"Ah — white neckties 1" repeated Julian absently. He was
more familiar with old ladies' bonnets, he thought, as he turned
the linen ties over in his fingers. He decided, however, that
he would go to the ball in deference chiefly to Denning's plea
that he needed the larger experience. Denning assured him
that the Charity Ball was a promiscuous affair of which no one
need stand in the slightest awe. Otherwise, he could not have
obtained the invitation for Julian, — but of course he did not
add this explanation.
CHAPTER IV.
Denning talked very pleasantly that evening for a couple
of hours on the subjects of balls and young girls. He ex-
plained much concerning the social life of the great city that
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to many minds remains shrouded in mystery, but it is doubtful
if Julian understood much of what was said. His mind was in
fact only half detached from the scenes and incidents of the
day just ended. Until they reached the ball room he was still
building hedges around his frail female waifs and rescuing
others from situations of extraordinary peril.
Denning steered him onward into the very heart of the fairy-
like scene. They paused for a moment beside a fluted pillar
garlanded with leaves and roses, while Denning, bowing right
and left to young girls and older women as they entered, looked
about him for some one to whom he might introduce Julian.
"Don't let anything these young things happen to say discon-
cert you," he observed, "because it is a well-known fact that
they don't know in the least what they're saying for more than
a year after they come out. Sometimes they lose their heads,
too, and we older men have to look after them or there'd
be the devil of a talk. As you do not dance you will have
to ask a girl to sit out a dance with you. There are plenty
have to ask a girl to sit out a dance with you. There are plenty
of corners for a chat. But if you get tired talking, the next
best thing is to stand by the door and regard these frivolities
with a grand, gloomy air, — as if you were some very distin-
guished person — a foreign ambassador, perhaps — you don't
look unlike something of that sort. Here comes Miss Mel-
ville, to whom I shall introduce you. You cannot be with her
long, for she's in great demand to-night; but there'll be time
for a stroll through the corridors perhaps."
A few minutes later, Julian found himself walking -by the
side of a young beauty gowned in white and gold of such deli-
cate texture that it might have been made of butterflies' wings.
She carried an armful of large bouquets made up of roses.
There were so many of them and they were in such danger of
slipping from her that she handed Julian three of the largest to
carry. She led the way herself and was busy casting smiles
and nods in every direction, while she poured into Julian's ear
a stream of daintily extravagant comments and exclamations.
He listened as a man might do who finds himself swimming in
green depths by the side of a mermaid whose discourse might
be of interest to the curious — possibly of distinct scientific
value to the learned — but is of too ethereal and incomprehen-
sible a nature to elicit a reply. His unconcerned, yet very direct
scrutiny reached the fair maid through the dazzling medium of
her own glory, and passed happily for the nonchalance of a
young man of the world.
The smooth, long face and slightly bald head of Cooper
Denning suddenly appeared from a doorway. When not smil-
ing he reminded one of an austere priest ; but at this moment
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he was laughing gaily and addressing a young girl by his side
with an air of chivalrous devotion. They stopped beside Julian
and formed a group.
Half a dozen young men approached to speak to Miss Mel-
ville. The next moment, Julian found himself walking in the
opposite direction, not quite understanding how he had lost
Miss Melville, or who had relieved him of her flowers. The
young lady by his side appeared to be just as beautiful, how-
ever, though she had fewer bouquets, so it did not much mat-
ter; and in a few moments she was talking into his ear a
brilliant continuation of Miss Melville's remarks.
Presently she spoke of Denning. He had introduced to
her "quantities" of men, so that all her dances were engaged.
He had told her from the first not to be afraid, and had ad-
vised what kind of a gown to wear. They had talked it over
several weeks ago and he had insisted on white with pearl and
silver trimming. Otherwise she might have worn pink. Mr.
Denning had prophesied exactly the kind of time she was going
to have — it was remarkable how he always knew. He was
wonderfully kind, always doing the most unselfish things imag-
inable. Julian recalled that Miss Melville had sung Denning^
praises almost in the same words.
There was another turn in the social wheel. Julian's com-
panion and her bouquets were again torn from him, and he was'
soon escorting a third young lady, who was burdened with only
one bouquet.
In reply to her direct questions, Julian explained in explicit
sentences that he did not dance ; he knew not the name of the
waltz that was being played; he did not know the man who
was leading the German ; a string of negatives seemed to have
become the sum and substance of his conversational resources.
The girl consulted her program; she lifted her head and
threw a glance distractedly around.
"It is the fourth dance 1" she cried in a trembling voice, and
looked at Julian, who in searching through the annals of his
experience for a precedent to guide his actions could think of
nothing more definite than a scene in "Alice in Wonderland.''
"You seem troubled; can I be of any assistance?" he asked
quickly.
"Troubled!" repeated the girl. "I should think I was! I
wish I were dead; I wish I had never been born!"
She turned to him in desperate appeal.
"Take me to some corner where I can hide myself, where no
one will see me. There's nothing else that you can do— ap-
parently."
Julian led her hastily to a small sofa partly concealed by tall
plants blooming in gilded pots. Was the girl ill? Was she
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going to faint ? Or was he beginning to figure in a role fash-
ioned after the escapades of heroes who accept mysterious mis-
sions intended for somebody else, and are led into sit-
uations of marvelous complexity, from which they escape
only by taking wildly impossible risks? Or was this last
experience in the nature of a fantastic joke — a young girl's
effort to amuse herself by the indulgence of an extravagant
imagination ?
Julian begged her again to tell him what was the matter.
She answered with unexpected irritation:
"You are dreadfully obtuse 1 Do you want me to say in the
plainest of English that I'm not engaged for the German —
or anything? Why, if you wanted to help me you would go
out into the highways and bring up all the men you knew or
ever heard of — you would bring up quantities of men to be in-
troduced to me 1 How can I be expected to know all the men
of this city when I have been living in Baltimore?"
Julian sat scowling at what seemed to him the indelicacy
of this speech. In all his encounters with the "forwardness"
of waifs and strays he had never met anything more repugnant
to his taste.
"Unfortunately," he replied, eyeing her with coldness, "I
cannot be your knight errant, for like yourself, I know no one
at this ball — I know only one man here."
"Mr. Denning, I suppose — I saw you with him. It would be
of no use for you to speak to him; he doesn't choose that I shall
have a lovely time." Her tone was bitter. She went on with
a sudden pathos that seemed to bring her suddenly within the
range of a more chivalrous consideration:
"All the other girls are having such a good time — all but
poor little me, left out in the cold ! My beautiful sister forgets
about me as usual — she is having a magnificent time herself,
of course. It means that I am a dead failure. I shall have to
hide my head somewhere and take to works of charity — Sunday
schools and horrors of that kind. I shall have to wear clothes
that don't fit and poke about in the slums, talking to horrid,
ill-smelling poor people."
"You might try a convent," suggested Julian, thoughtfully —
bringing all his kindly wits to bear upon the unusualness of her
case — "but the slums are now altogether too fashionable ; you
would meet more of your successful rivals there than would be
comfortable, I fear — from your standpoint — I mean — of a so-
cial failure."
The young girl turned upon him a stare of haughty astonish-
ment; his cold-blooded candor had brought a deep blush to
her cheeks.
"I have always heard," she observed with a shrug of her bare
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shoulders and an irrelevance that was intended to convey a '
pointed rebuke, "that the men of this city were a set of odious
antiques. Fve heard they think it improper to be alone with a
girl anywhere; they haven't the faintest idea what a stair-case
is made for ; if they make use of it at all, they all go and sit there
together in a crowd — these absurd, odious little men!"
"You mean they leave the girls alone in the parlor?" asked
Julian, who was beginning to feel sleepy.
"Oh ! The girls go, too, of course ! The point is that they all
sit together. I never had to explain so much in my life before.
There's just one nice man living in this whole town, a friend of
mine says — she means Cooper Denning."
"He seems to be a great favorite."
"Yes, he leads everything. She told me an amusing story
about him. He was dancing once with a very wild girl — a per-
fect madcap. She had been flirting with him desperately some-
where, just before he asked her to dance, and she was furious
at him. She had been daring him to kiss her — setting him al-
most crazy — and she was furious because he would not try.
Now what do you suppose that girl did? Why, she stopped
suddenly while they were waltzing in the middle of the room —
right before everybody — and shrieked at the top of her voice,
and then cried out : 'He kissed me!' Just imagine how the poor
man felt when he hadn't! And what on earth do you suppose
he did ? What would you have done in his place ?"
"I can't imagine — "
"Why, he pretended that he had! He did that just to save her !
Wasn't it splendid of him? But, the truth leaked out after-
ward, for it seems that somebody overheard her daring him to
kiss her and gave the whole thing away. Wasn't it a shame?"
"I don't know — " The ethics of such a situation were rather
too much for Julian ; his eyelids, moreover, were heavy — he was
frightfully sleepy. The young girl went on mercilessly:
"I am going to tell you something funny. I was sitting on
the staircase once, having a perfectly heavenly time with a man
I had just met. We were perfectly absorbed in each other,
and never noticed that another pair had seated themselves
above us with plates of ice cream in their laps. They became
perfectly absorbed in each other too — violently absorbed, I
should say. The girl leaned to one side and suddenly sprang
up — forgetting the ice cream on her lap. Down it came on the
back of my neck! My dress was cut down to a point in the
back, and the ice cream went down — down — to the belt of my
dress — it actually did ! Just imagine what a plate of ice cream
would feel like on your spinal column ! I had a chill right there
on the spot. My teeth chattered, and the two men had to ram
their silk handerchiefs down my back — I made them — to get it
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all out. They were so scared, too — the poor men ! I mean —
I suppose they were afraid I was going to have pneumonia."
Julian knew not what comment to make on this anecdote and
remained dismally silent. He was wondering if he would have
to spend the night in the society of this terrible young person
and if the ball was likely to last until morning. Immediately
afterwards, however, she became absorbed in watching three
figures that were approaching, one of them being Cooper Den-
ning. As they drew near she leaned forward with eagerness —
trembling, apparently, between hope and fear.
"Marian, are you looking for me at last?"
The palm leaves were pushed apart and revealed a young
woman clad in iridescent silk of pale sea-green with a border
of white flowers encircling her arms and shoulders. The face
was one of great loveliness, and Julian rightly guessed that its
chief charm lay in a wonderful radiance of expression.
Julian stood with his back against the fluted pillar, while
his companion and her sister hastily exchanged explanations,
apologies and ripples of laughter, to which Denning and the
other man added dextrous compliments implying that they had
been searching vainly for this particular young lady all the
evening. Julian was conscious of a vague impression that the
face of the sister was not new to him. Had he seen it in
his dreams? It appeared to him miraculously as a composite
reproduction of all the fair faces that one might imagine adorn-
ing the art galleries of the world. Its charm of perfect famil-
iarity — as if it had always existed and was in fact as old as
the hills in its eternal freshness and beauty — blended mysteri-
ously with its claim to a positive uniqueness. As he gazed, its
likeness to a secretly cherished ideal became more and more
pronounced, until suddenly the lovely eyes fell upon him with
a glance that was almost one of recognition.
A murmuring of names in which his own was omitted while
he learned that of his companion to be Vaughn — her sister
addressing her as Gertrude — broke the spell. Miss Vaughn,
instantaneously transformed into a nymph of mirth and jollity
— somewhat to the loss of her air of qualified prettiness—
withdrew, chatting gaily with Denning and his friend, whom it
now appeared he had brought up for the sole purpose of effect-
ing an introduction, thus providing a bashful youth and a for-
lorn maiden with partners for the "German." She looked back
to utter a laughing farewell, and her glance, sweeping past
Julian, expressed very distinctly the wish that she might never
see him again. It did not ruffle his vanity, because in a second
he realized that he was left alone with the beautiful sister whose
first name he knew to be Marian; it vibrated in his ear as a
name full of music and grace.
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His sense that he was not of this new bewildering world into
which he seemed to have stumbled from sheer lack of will to
direct his steps that particular evening, began to dissolve into
a consciousness that just now he was fitting into something
that was both harmonious and interesting. Without embar-
rassment he waited for her to speak.
She spoke first with her eyes — so sweetly and reassuringly
that Julian felt drawn at once into intimacy.
"My sister has left me without mentioning your name." Her
voice was like a flute 1
"She did not know or care who I was — I could not dance,"
laughed Julian.
"Gertrude thinks only of a shoulder to cling to and an arm
to whirl her around. You might be the greatest lion in Amer-
ica, but Gertrude would have none of you unless you were will-
ing to dance yourself to pieces for her benefit — but I should
like to know what to call you — I am Mrs. Starling."
Julian told his name, after which it was natural to tell where
he came from and as much of his history as he thought neces-
sary for identification. He described his country home in the
lake-studded county of New York with an inward smile over
his wanton destruction of Cooper Denning's deceptive little
scheme. To his surprise, he found himself elaborating all the
reasons that had led him into a choice of what he called rather
pathetically his "subterranean profession." Suddenly looking
into her face he saw that it was illumined by a glow of feeling.
It was like looking at an exquisitely wrought porcelain vase in
which a lighted taper was burning.
She seized the theme that was the mainspring of his life —
his enthusiasm for humanity, his desire to diminish sin and
suffering — and adorned it with her tender fancies.
Julian abandoned his idea of the flute; her voice was like
the chime of silver bells; he almost forgot the meaning of
her words while searching for this simile. A sudden inspira-
tion overpowered him.
"I am sure you sing!" He blushed at the irrelevance of his
remark. She turned to him with an arch expression.
"And I am sure you love music!" It was almost as if she
had sung the words. "You play some instrument — the violin,
perhaps ?"
Julian admitted that he had studied music — at one time with
intense ardor. His eyes shone with a peculiar light; his dark,
clear-cut face looked all at once strikingly handsome as the
blood rose to his cheek. Marian's eyes rested upon him
thoughtfully.
"And I sing — a little," she echoed in a low voice. She grew
grave and cast down her eyes, for Julian was gazing at her as
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if searching for a glimpse of the bird in her throat. He no
longer felt sleepy or bored.
Later on they talked of other things, but frequently they
came back to the subject of music which both of them loved.
Once they stopped talking to listen to the playing of the or-
chestra, which they quickly agreed was not worth listening to.
They did not concern themselves about supper, but walked
once or twice through the corridors looking for Gertrude. It
was not hard to find her ; she was bent on dancing herself and
her partners into the early morning hours, and it was a long
time before Marian could persuade her that the cock was
really about to crow. The sisters finally withdrew into the
dressing-room. Julian waited outside where he was bidden to
stand, and escorted them later to their carriage. He shut the
door softly and watched the carriage roll down the street until
out of sight.
As he could not find Denning, he walked home alone, hoping
that Denning was already fast asleep in bed. He was a little
ashamed at having stayed at the ball so late. As he looked with
wide-open eyes at the stars which were still visible through the
window, he smiled at the grey dawn. He tried to arrange and
critically survey his impressions of the ball, but they merged
into one definite charming recollection — beyond which all was
confused and of no importance. His thoughts were now
touching the deep, vast, incomprehensible verities — they were
incommunicable, he believed ; they melted rapidly, however, into
pleasant dreams and profound slumber.
(To be continued.)
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* SOCIALISM ABROAD *
Professor E. Untermann
FRANCE.
The inevitable reaction after the sham prosperity due to the Paris
exposition, the rise in the price of coal, and a multitude of local causes,
more or less directly traceable to the inconsistencies of the capitalist
mode of production, have kept all France and especially the socialists
in a feverish excitement of strikes during the last eighteen months.
Notable among these struggles of exploited against exploiters are the
strike of the metal workers in Creusot, of the miners in Montceau les
Mines and Pas de Calais, and of the longshoremen in Marseilles.
The demands of the tollers were settled peaceably In regions where,
as in Pas de Calais, the labor organizations are old and strong enough
to command respect. There the employers concluded that discretion
is the better part of— business, and made concessions without testing
the lighting strength of their wage-slaves.
But in regions where these organizations are young and untried,
the masters are displaying the usual overbearing arrogance character-
istic of the "'higher classes." Here the men asking for a greater share
In the product of their toil met haughty refusals. Here, after the dec-
laration of the strike, the wealth producers were confronted by the
brutal resistance of the drones fed by them, the military, the police,
the press and the clergy. And the upholders of law and order reveled
in the force bestowed on them by the men they oppress.
In Chalon, a small town of 26,000 inhabitants, with an industrial
working force of 2,600, the socialists were attacked by the soldiers,
arrested by the police and terrorized by the judiciary, because— some
anarchists had created a disturbance. Tout comme chez nous! Capi-
talistic methods are the same the world over. The strike was sup-
pressed by force.
In Montceau les Mines, the miners have held their own. With an
effective organization and a splendid discipline, they have given to
their fellow workers an example of solidarity and quiet determination
that will leave lasting results. No disturbance has occurred, no priva-
tions have been endured so far. By thirty-two distributing offices,
15,000 rations, costing 3,000 francs, are issued daily. Assistance is
given by comrades all over the country in response to an appeal of
Guesde and Lafargue pointing out that a daily contribution of one sou
(1 cent) from 40,000 laborers will enable the miners to carry their
strike.
A dispatch to the "Vorwarts," Berlin, states that the congress of
mine workers has declared its intention to demand the nationalization
of the mines within forty-eight hours, if the Society of Montceau les
Mines does not accede to their demands. There is also a possibility
that the strike will be extended to all the mines in France. A speedy
settlement of the dispute, however, seems to be near at hand.
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In Marseilles the strike Inaugurated by 2,000 longshoremen has
steadily assumed greater dimensions. One after another the sailors,
the stokers, the coal-heavers have made common cause with their
companions in slavery. And from Marseilles the movement has spread
to Bordeaux. In these two main arteries of commerce in the south of
France navigation is practically at a standstill.
The solidarity of the workers in this strike becomes doubly signifi-
cant through the fact that nearly every nationality is represented in
the trades composing the striking force. To American workingmen It
will be startling news that in Marseilles, as well as in Montceau les
Mines, the socialist mayors openly sympathized with and assisted the
strikers.
How valuable and Indispensable to success International socialist
co-operation may be is "strikingly" demonstrated on this occasion.
For at the request of Mayor Flassieres of Marseilles, the laborers of
Genoa and, according to later dispatches, of Naples, have also declared
the strike. Only the Spanish ports of the west Mediterranean are thus
left open to commerce. The latest reports of the capitalist press bring
the usual sensational descriptions of disorders caused by the striking
"mob/ 1 and a clash with the gensd'armes is said to have resulted fatally
for some of the latter. According to the same source, Mayor Flassieres
was snubbed by the Premier, Waldeck-Rousseau, for trying to secure
government assistance for the strikers.
Just as we go to press we are informed that, owing to the pressure
brought to bear on them by the government, the employers have de-
cided to submit the matter to arbitration.
ITALY.
The new Cabinet Zanardelli-Giolitti is giving its first feeble signs of
life. However liberal the men composing this body may be, the social-
ists are well aware that they cannot expect any thorough amelioration
of social and economic conditions from the new ministers. And while
our comrades are continuing their sniggle against the forces of ig-
norance and barbarity, represented by the Roman clergy, the Gamorra,
the Mafia, the soldiery and a prostituted judiciary, the columns of the
bourgeois papers are filled with startling and sensational reports about
the famine in Apulia.
It is the noble and inspiring duty of the capitalist press to perpet-
uate by lying, misrepresentation and inventive genius an economic
system that forces the people to reap the whirlwind when their ex-
ploiters sow the wind. And when the whirlwind is taking off un-
counted numbers of wage-slaves, then the duty of this press is to
solicit contributions to famine funds from middle class suckers who
are willing to feed the helpless victims of the masters. The Italian
bourgeois press is nobly doing its duty.
In the provinces of Bari, Foggia and Lecce, on the southern
coast of the Adriatic, thousands of unemployed have been suffering
starvation for months. This region lost heavily through the abolition
of the reciprocity treaty with France. Besides, the vineyards were
destroyed by the phylloxera (grape louse) twice within five years, and
the olive crop ruined by the mosca olearia (olive fly). In consequence
the land-owners could not pay their taxes, the tenant farmers were
unable to pay their rent, and neither has the money to hire laborers.
The latter, exploited to the limit, emaciated by hunger and half frozen,
demand work. Twenty centesimi (5 cents) are eagerly accepted as a
day's wages. Hunger riots have broken out in several districts.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
SOCIALISM ABROAD 658
"The government," writes "Vorwarts," "has at once taken measures
against the hanger— a special train full of soldiers has been dispatched
to the scene."
How different from this picture, worthy of the brush of a "Hell
Breughel," is the aspect of things where socialists hold the political
power! Tn Mantua, 17,000 farm laborers have recently organized into
one provincial union, representing 116 different unions. Resolutions
were adopted favoring "affiliation with those who agitate for the
speedy realization of the following demands:
1. A law protecting women and children in Industrial and agricul-
tural pursuits, on the basis adopted by the congress of Italian so*
cialists.
2. A law creating agricultural prud'hommes.
Vivat sequens! Next!
Even the capitalist press cannot refrain from paying tribute to the
healthy atmosphere of a new life created by socialist organization.
Adolf o Rossi, editor of the monarchist "Adrlatico," describes the condi-
tions in the province of Mantua in these words:
In Suzzara (electional district of Gonzaga that elected Enrico
Ferri) the administration has been in the hands of the socialists for a
long time. The transition of administrative control from the hands of
the "moderates" into those of the socialists was not only accomplished
without a revolution, but has even terminated the personal feuds that
ruined the country. The oppositional parties, by ceaseless agitation
for improvements in the municipality, have completely changed Suz-
zara within twenty years. A new town hall, the most magnificent
hospital in the province, many new buildings and model schools have
been erected. The industries have also developed splendidly. The
level of general education is very high, thanks to the industrial school,
having classes In physics, chemistry, mechanics and agriculture. . . .
Elections are held in perfect order. . . . The administration dis-
tributes 200 tickets to farmers and poor people when the theater is
open. The children receive meals in school, assisted by a small family
tax. . . . Seventy-five per cent of the electors attend elections.
In Gonzaga the socialists founded a "consumers' and laborers' club
for farmers." This club has now 200 members and its stock has risen
from 6 lire to 18 lire.
BELGIUM.
In "A Trip Through Flanders," published in the Brussels "Le
Peuple" Comrade Aug. Dewinne describes the condition of the work-
ing class in Flanders. Wherever clerical Influence is prevailing the
people are living in abject poverty. Farm laborers earn from 63 to
72 centimes (12 to 14 cents) per day, and during harvest time they
average about 1 franc (20 cents) per day. On the other hand, a great
many of them earn nothing at all during the winter. In Zeveneecken
the weavers working with handlooms are so afraid of their masters
that they do not dare to admit socialists into their homes. These
weavers earn 10 to 12.5 francs ($2 to $2.60) per week, as long as they
are young and strong, while old people average a daily wage of 60
centimes (10 cents). The working time is twelve hours per day.
In Hamm 95 per cent of the laborers cannot read. The children
cannot go to school because they must help their parents to work.
In heat or cold, rain or shine, little five-year-olds are standing all day
turning the wheel for their fathers who manufacture cord by hand.
Competition with machine spinners has forced the wages of the hand
spinners down to the bare level of starvation. And though their
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OH INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
wages have been nominally raised, still they are the losers, for they are
obliged to produce more cord per kilogram of raw material, which is
equivalent to a reduction of wages. These spinners formerly had a
union of 400 members; only seventy members have been left by the
hungry waves of competition.
On the other hand, wherever socialism has become strong, the
laborers are throwing off the yoke of clerical and economic oppression.
A strong agitation for universal suffrage of both sexes is carried on,
and although Vandervelde's bill for the introduction of universal suf-
frage, and another bill granting an amnesty to all laborers sentenced
for political misdemeanors, have been defeated in the Chamber of Rep-
resentatives, we may confidently hope to see these measures carried
into effect on the wings of socialist victory.
True to the resolutions outlined in the August number of the
''International Socialist Review/' our Belgian comrades are preparing
for a general strike and a campaign of obstruction in the Chamber.
The agitation for universal suffrage is being continued with renewed
vigor.
DENMARK.
The progress of the co-operatives in Denmark has been extremely
rapid. This advance means at the same time an equally strong growth
of socialism. For in Denmark co-operatives, trade-unions and social-
ism are almost Identical.
One of the main factors contributing to the impulse to form co-
operatives was a law, capitalistic in spirit and reactionary in purpose,
decreeing that within seven miles of any town merchandise should not
be sold by other dealers than those residing in that town.
Instead of becoming tributary to the capitalist dealers of the towns,
the socialists united in co-operative societies that do not come under
this law.
In 1866 the first co-operative association was formed. In 1898 the
official statistics reported 970 of these organizations, with an aggregate
membership of 160,000. Bight hundred and thirty-seven consumers'
clubs, having a total of 130,000 members, conferred their benefits
strictly on members only. Of these clubs only eight had their seats
in towns. There were, furthermore, 133 co-operatives that did not
confine their dealings to their members. These, however, are regarded
as commercial enterprises by the law. Producers' clubs are repre-
sented by 1,025 dairies, 25 lard factories and a number of bakeries.
"Frequently ," writes H. Faber in the February issue of 'TAvenlr
Social," "a Danish farmer is a member of ten co-operatives and of a
farmers' club or an agricultural society."
A personal letter from Comrade Gustav Bang, who has recently
been speaking to enormous audiences in the University of Copenhagen,
says that extensive preparations are being made by the socialists for
the elections to the lower house, and that great gains will be surely
made by the comrades.
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
THE WORLD OF LABOR
By Max S. Hayes
On May 20 the nine-hour day is to take effect in all shops controlled
by tho National Metal Trades' Association, as per agreement with the
International Association of Machiists. But there are hundreds of
employers throughout the country who refuse to be guided by the flrst-
named organization, and refuse to grant the concession, and conse-
quently the union officials everywhere are working like beavers to
organize the craft to enforce the shorter workday. It is even hinted
that the members of the N. M. T. A. are liable to break their agree-
ment, using as a pretext the fact that the Independent shops refuse to
yield. It is pretty certain that strikes will take place all over the
country, and it is also quite probable that other metal workers will be
drawn Into it. Meanwhile the movement to federate the metal work-
ing crafts is gaining considerable headway, and it is estimated that
at least 150,000 men will be combined by May 1.
Trouble on the lakes is looked for this year. The marine engineers
have been on strike for several weeks at all the important ports. Their
specific demand is that the lake craft be graded' so that more men be
given employment The ship masters organized in sympathy and
threatened to stand by the engineers, but suddenly allowed their
organization to go to pieces, and the statement was given out that the
cause was that they came in conflict with United States laws govern-
ing marine affairs. At this writing the longshoremen are in conference
with their employers in Cleveland, and a deadlock has resulted. Tho
workers want an increase of 10 per cent over last year, and the hours
of labor reduced from twelve to ten a day. The bosses claim the
wage rate was too high last season, and that no more concessions will
be granted. The ship and dock owners say they are not adverse to
having a strike now, as such an occurrence would stiffen prices. They
are also quietly organizing a sort of beneficial union to break the
power of the seafaring crafts when a crisis comes.
All signs point to a strike in the anthracite coal field on April 1.
Although all the large operators posted notices in which they promised
to pay prevailing rates of wages and continue present conditions gen-
erally, the miners in their convention in Scranton, Pa., the middle of
the past month, took the bull by the horns and demanded recognition
of the union. They insist that the operators must agree on or before
April 1 to meet their representatives in joint conference or a walkout
will take place. The operators appear to be just as stubborn on this
point as they were last autumn, and it is claimed that, anticipating
such a turn of affairs, they haxe worked their mines overtime and
stocked up thousands of tons of coal, and are determined to give
battle. Certain it is that J. P. Morgan has postponed his trip to
Europe, where he was going for the purpose of negotiating for the
absorption of the recently organized German wire and nail trust, corn-
ea
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
6W INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
prised of eighty-seven mills, British street railways and other securi-
ties, to take a hand in the trouble.
Two thousand blast furnace employes in the Mahoning and
Shenango valleys threaten to strike unless former wages are restored.
Last fall, immediately after the election, while still hoarse from
shouting for "the full dinner pall," these mill workers, who earn less
than $2 a day for the most laborious toil, were notified of a ten per cent
reduction. They were unorganized, and after some grumbling ac-
cepted the terms of the trusts. Then, after the horse had been pur-
loined, they started to organize, and now they are in fairly good
shape and want their old wage rate bck. In the interum the trusts
boosted the price of pig-iron $2 a ton, and are doing fairly well in the
matter of accumulating dividends, which, of course, are needed for
the purpose of gobbling up competitors and ensuring an absolute
monopoly.
Building trades went on strike in Pittsburg for higher wages and
shorter hours, and in other cities those crafts also threaten to go out
on April 1 or May 1.
Railway trainmen on the New York Central are restless. They
want a uniform scale on the whole system and other grievances reme-
died. An Albany dispatch says the trainmen, if a strike is ordered,
will attempt a tie-up on all roads in the United States and Canada,
and that the conductors and firemen will also be asked to join the
strike.— The C, B. ft Q. magnates gave union employes the option this
month of leaving their organizations or the services of the road, and
nearly all withdrew from the brotherhoods.
George W. Perkins has been re-elected president of cigarmakers'
national union by a majority of two to one. Nearly all the old officers
were also re-elected.
H. Gaylord Wilshire, the well-known California Social Democrat,
has again challenged Bryan to debate the trust question. Wilshire
offers Bryan the privilege of selecting time and place, will pay all ex-
penses, and give the latter $1,000 besides; and if the audience votes
that the Nebraska man made the best argument, he will receive an-
other thousand dollars. It's certainly a liberal offer; better than lec-
turing or running a paper.
A Colorado man has invented a combination automobile plow,
cultivator, planter and harvester, which can be operated by gasoline
or electricity for 75 cents a day, and can do the work of several teams
of horses and men.— A Chicago man invented a new rotary engine,
with a speed ranging from 250 to 1.000 revolutions a minute, and
weighing about one-tenth as much as any other form of engine pro-
ducing equal power. Its mechanism is reduced to a minimum, and
gear, springs, bolts, screws, etc., cannot break because there are none.
Tho engine can be placed on any sort of foundation, and experts pro-
nounce it a success.— In New Bedford. Mass.. a new device has sup-
planted the vivacious telephone girls. The subscriber can secure any
number desired by merely pressing buttons, connections being made
at the central station automatically, and absolute secrecy is guaran-
teed. The system is to be introduced in Fall River and other New
England towns.— The Electrical Review says Poulsen's new telegra-
phone is a success, and transmits sound better than the graphaphone
or telephone. It is an amazingly simple device, and reproduces mag-
netic strains in a steel wire permanently.— Baguulo, an Italian in-
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
THE WORLD OF LABOR 667
ventor, has patented a new device to transmit power to a distance.
It is based on the principle of transmitting pressure to liquids and
gases, and a Paris technical journal says the new discovery enables
the realization of 90 to 95 per cent of the initial energy and an equal
distribution of power.
New York unions spent a heap of money to have a law enacted
compelling contractors who do public work to pay the prevailing rate
of trade union wages, and now comes the Supreme Court and declares
that the law is unconstitutional, as it interferes with "the freedom of
contract." Judge Dennis O'Brien, Democrat, and Judson S. Landori,
Republican, wrote the opinion. That's worth remembering. Of course,
the unionists are angry, but a few are even foolish enough to advise
petitioning the legislature to call a constitutional convention, amend
the constitution, and then re-enact the law.— The New Jersey Supreme
Court handed down a decision which states in effect that the "labor
law" existent in Paterson, making it mandatory to place the union
label on official printing, is unconstitutional, as it also interferes with
"the freedom of contract." The absurdity of lobbying for "labor laws"
before hostile legislatures, and then, even where secured, expecting
hostile officials and courts to enforce them, will probably dawn on
trade unionists some day. If workingmen were sufficiently class-con-
scious to place their own kind in political power, no such farces would
be enacted.
Striking miners of New Mexico have had a blanket injunction
thrown over them. Old story.
Secretary Butscher issued charters to nine new S. D. P. locals in
past month.— Referendum vote in favor of uniting all socialist organ-
izations carried by large majority. June or July is favored as tho
time, and Indianapolis as the place by small plurality, though many
are now consindering Buffalo as convention city, holding that the at-
tendance would be much larger and the expense reduced one-half,
ow!ng to the exposition.— Municipal elections in some New York, Penn-
sylvania and New England cities and towns recently show steady
gains for S. D. P.— Chicago Socialist party leads the procession in the
matter of growth, having 1,300 dues-paying members at present, 95
being admitted in one week.-— Over 100 Italian socialists in the Bast
seceded from the old S. L. P. and joined the Social Democratic party.
They are about to establish a paper. F. M. Gorzone, 103 West Third
street, New York, has the matter in charge.— Missouri S. D.'s will
probably adopt name of Socialist party, as Democratic legislature en-
acted a law debarring them from official ballot hereafter.— Washington
comrades defeated an infamous disfranchising primary bill before
the legislature.— Michigan S. D.'s nominated complete state ticket-
Job Harriman has been elected labor secretarial in New York. His
duties will be to attend to legal affairs of about 10,000 unionists.—
The "Vanguard" is the name of a new S. D. P. paper at Brockton,
Mass., and a French paper, "L'Eveil au Peuple," started at Nashua,
N. H— Raphael Buck, author of an anti-socialist book called "The
Emancipation of the Workers," has come out In an open letter stating
that he has destroyed the plates of his work and turned socialist-
Clarence Nugent, prominent Texas Populist, has joined S. D. P.—
Minneapolis comrades will build a thousand-dollar automobile to send
out on a propaganda tour.— Texas comrades raised $500 for a stato
organ.— Father McGrady, the eloquent Kentucky priest, and Rev.
Charles Vail, the New Jersey author-lecturer, spoke at some large
meetings In Middle Western States during past month.— On two sep-
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65b INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
arate votes at different meetings the St. Louis Central Trades Council
went on record by large majority in favor of demanding resignation
of the president, who had accepted a nomination for office on the
Democratic, ticket, and that officers can only accept positions on class-
conscious labor tickets.— Chicago socialists secured control of a church
and turned it into a labor temple. Prof. Herron delivered the dedica-
tory speech.— It is rumored that Mrs. Pierre Lorrillard, Jr., has becomo
a convert to socialism, and will use much of her wealth to spread the
doctrine.
Total business failures last year were 21,838, according to United
States government, instead of 10,000, according to Dun's and Brad-
street's, professional prosperity-puffers.
All eyes are centered on Morgan, the trust magnate, and everybody
wonders what he is going to do next. No sooner is the billion-dollar
trust launched than it is announced that the Rockefeller iron mines, ore-
carrying railroad and lake fleet is absorbed, and the bridge and tin can
trust also and the capital is to be Increased another quarter of a billion
dollars. Then about a dozen more anthracite coal mines are gathered
in, and a comprehensive scheme is made public to make the monopoly
complete and pile up many more millions by abolishing all retail
dealers in the large cities and establishing a central coal station, by
abolishing all sales gents, ten per cent of miners and railway em-
ployes, and hundreds of clerks, bookkeepers, etc., and by closing all
of the poorest mines. Next the bituminous mines are to be brought in
line, and the first step is to raise rates for carrying coal on Morgan
railroads ten cents per ton, thus driving the small operators to the
wall, and the acquiring of all the mines in several counties in West
Virginia, as well as some large properties in Pennsylvania. These
sweeping consolidations are important enough, but hardly as startling
as the dividing of the American continent into zones so far as the rail-
ways are concerned, with a few Interests in almost absolute control.
Thus the Goulds are to be masters of the Southwest, and are now com-
bining their lines into a $300,000,000 trust; the Harriman syndicate is
to rule the great Central West, and J. P. Hill the Northwest. The
Rothschilds control much of the South, and the Vanderbilt-Morgan
Interests hold almost absolute sway east of Chicago. Rockefeller Is
more or less interested in all the zones, and the bold buccaneers are
now planning to girdle the earth with a transportation monopoly, and
with this tremendous power control the markets of the world and
absorb or paralyze industries in any country they choose.— Pages,
might be written of the movements among minor trusts, such as swal-
lowing independent concerns, monopolizing raw material, reorganizing,
increasing capital, beating down wages, raising prices, etc., etc., but
the modest space of a monthly magazine will not allow it.
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
SOCIALISM AND RELIGION
Professor George D. Herron
I.
At the heart of nature, and working itself out in human forces, is
a relentless and yet merciful law of truth. No lie ever permanently
prevails, even though it lasts for years or for centuries. Somehow
and somewhere the truth about collective and individual life is known.
This is the ground of our faith in nature and in the good outcome of
human evolution. To some of us it seems to disclose a universal will
at the heart of things— a good-will that is to at least have its way
in life and history. So we work with this will, treasuring every
scrap of truth as its precious gift, no matter how great and terrible
the cost.
II.
Either co-operatively or retributively we all have to fulfill the truth
of things at last. Life moves on by exact law or principle. What
we fail to give in love we give in suffering; what we fail to give in
service we give in sorrow; what we fail to give in co-operation we
give in the waste of strife. The debt of each life to the whole life;
the debt of the whole life to each life has to be paid— paid to life
out of life, paid either by freely-given life or by life exacted by retri-
butive processes.
III.
For instance, the truth that the world owes each man a noble, full
and free living, is demonstrating itself every year of history. Every
gain of one man at the expense of another, of one class at the ex-
pense of another, of one nation at the expense of another, of one
section or race at the expense of another, comes back upon the gainer
with relentless exactness, demanding not only principal but com-
pound interest. Whenever and wherever we fail to keep our brothers
we are destroyed in their destruction, as we ought to be. In so far
as the interests of all men are not made common and equally sacred
by civilization, just so far civilization fills itself with tragedy and
revolution. That some people are entitled to more than other people,
that some are entitled to rule over others, that some have greater
and more Imperative needs and rights than others,— this is the master-
lie of civilization. All existing institutions are built upon that He
by the capitalistic system. No lie can be a safe foundation for any
Institution or any individual life. No lie can bring any kind of indi-
vidual or social peace. The truth of the common and equal needs
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
660 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE IV
of all men, of the common and equal sacredness of all lives, Is the
only basis on which a social order can build, or really be an order.
It is the only basis, or individual attitude, upon or by which a man
may proceed to do good or be good.
IV.
The fear of truth is the security of evil. Upon the concealment of
truth every tyranny rests. Upon the exposure of truth all liberty and
safety depend. So long as there is any kind of a He in the fabric of
civilization, in its organization or activity, in its production or distri-
bution, just so long will civilization be full of misery and violence.
Every compromise with truth begets tyranny and social torment.
We can never get along with nine-tenths of the truth, or three-fourths
of the truth, or any fraction thereof, great or small; we can get along
only with the whole truth. We have to take the whole truth about
a thing, about an economy, a situation, a problem, or go without any
truth. We cannot really live and free ourselves with scraps of truth.
We cannot say, in justification of compromise or opportunism, that
a half-loaf of truth is better than no truth. Truth is not to be had
In half-loaves. There is no market in the universe for half-truth, and
we should be grateful that there is not
V.
Yet the fear of truth is the most apparent fact of human disorder.
What preacher is expected or appointed to take a free look at life
and tell just what he sees, with no more, as truth? What politician
was ever expected to try to find the truth about any question, or
even take truth into consideration? What religious newspaper ever
thought of seeking to justly or fairly state the truth about an opponent?
How much does a desire for active truth about anything or all things
control human action, social and individual?
VI.
But we have no freedom except as we stand on truth. Not only
are we made free by the truth— nothing else makes us free. No price
is too great to be paid for the truth. So long as there is any kind
of a lie in our life we are in danger and torment; but so soon as we
stand upon truth we league the universe with us. At any cost the
truth is sweet; let us out with the whole of it. It is better to be in
hell with the truth than in heaven without truth, or with nine-tenths
of the truth. Only the freedom of the truth can make us glad.
VII.
I sometimes try to Imagine the moral ecstacy, the winged joy of a
world in which only the truth would be thought good; only the truth
about anything sought, or thought safe. A brotherhood of the world,
in which each soul would stand naked, its whole truth exposed, before
every other soul, and not be afraid or ashamed; that is one of the
joys that shall fill the streets of the holy city of the co-operative
commonwealth.
George D. Hebrox.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
ec£
BOOK REVIEWS
4
Oratory: Its Requirements and Its Rewards. John P. Altgeld.
Charles H. Kerr ft Co. Cloth, 65 p. Fifty cents.
The person who opens this book with the expectation of finding the
same old hackneyed "exercises" for voice and gesture, with mechanical
instructions for proper "delivery," will be agreeably disappointed.
On the contrary, he will find a body of condensed, almost epigrammatic,
fundamental principles that, whether consciously or unconsciously
followed, are the only possible foundation for successful public speak-
ing. It Is a book to be studied and learned by heart, rather than sim-
ply read or retained as a book of reference. The arrangement and lan-
guage are of such a character as to make the book an excellent ex-
ample of the art it teaches. ,
Summary of Report of New York Bureau of Labor Statistics for
1900. The first part is on "The Bight Hour Day," of which the report
says: "About two-thirds of the 407,235 employes work from fifty-eight
to sixty-four hours a week— most of them sixty hours a week, or ten
hours a day— while 30 2-10 per cent work not more than nine and one-
balf hours a day, and only 8.1 per cent of the entire number enjoy a
working day of eight hours, which for a third of a century has been
the goal of trade union effort."
Detailed tables show that there has been practically no change in
this regard for ten years, and that taking the state as a whole what-
ever change has taken place has rather been in the direction of length-
ening than shortening the day. Part Third of the report is on "Eco-
nomic Condition of Organized Labor," and presents some very interest-
ing features. "From the first quarter of 1897 to the third quarter of
1899, the number of organizations in the state increased from 927 to
1,636." It is also interesting to note that a constantly Increasing num-
ber of working women are uniting with the unions The statistics
show that the amount of unemployment among these most favored of
the workers was in the neighborhood of 25 per cent during a large
portion of the "time of prosperity" from 1897 to 1900. This fact does
not appear so clearly in the direct statistics of unemployment as it
<Joes in the statistics of the number of days worked, where it is seen
that a large portion of the laborers only worked from ten to thirty
days during each quarter, while the average number was between
sixty and seventy days, or but about two-thirds of the time.
The Trust Problem. Prof. Jeremiah W. Jenks. McClure, Philips
A Co. Cloth, 281 pp.
Viewed from the point of view of the capitalist academic writer,
this is probably the best of all the many publications on the trust
question, and no one, whatever may be his economic beliefs, will
deny that it contains very much of value. The chapter on **The
Wastes of Competition" is full of matter of interest and value. We
661
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
662 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
learn that the American Steel and Wire Company "found It possible to
dispense with the services of nearly two hundred salesmen," and
"when one of the later whisky combinations was formed about three
hundred traveling salesmen could be spared without the business
being in any way neglected." When competition is removed cheaper
salesmen can be employed than when rivals must be met and ruined.
To say nothing of advertising, premlukns, etc., the American Steel and
Wire Company found that they could save $500,000 a year on "cross
freights," by being able to always ship from the nearest mill. Much
interesting Information is given on methods of organization and in-
ternal management, and the manner in which the "promoter" is re-
warded for his work. But when it comes to any discussion of the
trust in its wider industrial and social relations, the work becomes
pedantic in its style, narrow in range, and indefinite in conclusions.
The author takes shelter behind what his class call Impartiality and
a scientific attitude, but which could be better called uncertainty or
cowardice, an attitude (much affected by professorial writers in the pay
of capitalism, and thus he finally ends what started out as an ex-
cellent book with a lot of flabby recommendations in favor of various
measures of restriction, with the heaviest emphasis on "publicity."
The People's Marx. Gabrielle Devllle. Translated from the French
by Robert Rives La Monte. Cloth, pp. 13. $1.60.
Just as he # would know the doctrines of evolution must still begin
with Darwin, just so the socialist student who would know his sub-
ject thoroughly must familiarize himself with the works of Marx. But
many draw back because of the length and difficulty of "Capital" in
Its entirety, and so there have been many attempts to abridge and
popularize his work. While all of these leave something lacking this
is probably the most satisfactory of all y Anyone who reads "The Peo-
ple's Marx" carefully and thoughtfully will have secured an accurate
and fairly complete idea of the philosophy contained in "Capital." The
work consists of selected portions of the original work, taken almost
verbatum from the original and yet so carefully are they selected that
there is no sense of disconnection.
AMONG THE PERIODICALS
LeGrand Powers, chief statistician in charge of the department of
agriculture in the census of 1900, has some advance statements in the
"Review of Reviews" relating to the increase in the number of farms
and rural wealth. These figures are apparently arranged with the
intention of making them as useless and misleading as possible, and
this idea is strengthened by the character of some articles the author
is giving to the public press, in which some remarkable and ridiculous
conclusions are drawn. Ray Stannard Baker calls attention to the
fact that the United States is rapidly coming to the front as a pro-
ducer of beet sugar. "Twelve years ago the total product of beet
sugar In America was 255 tons; six years later the product had
jumped to 16.000 tons, and last year (1899) the product was about
80,000 tons. For 1900, those who know predict a product of 150,000
tons." It is interesting to note that the bringing of this capitalized
industry to the farm has brought with it an increased exploitation of
child labor. Prof. John R. Commons discusses "A New Way of Set-
tling Labor Disputes," by which he means the elaborate systrtn of
bargaining that has grown up between some of the more highly or-
ganized laborers and their employers. He gives a somewhat fanciful
Digitized by VjOOQIC
BOOK REVIEWS 663
comparison between these negotiations and the legislative, executive
and judicial branches of representative government, but seems to
utterly overlook the one most important point of all— that this is only
play after all, as in the last resort the whole scheme is subject to the
action of the regularly established capitalist government, controlled
by one of the parties to the dispute.
As usual "The World's Work" is singing the achievements of the capi-
talist that is paving the way to socialism. The working of the Home-
stead law is discussed under the title, "The Maker of Four Million
Homes." "Wake Up England" is a wild cry to the British laborer to
permit himself to be better exploited, like his fellow slave in America.
A most laudatory biography of P. D. Armour contains much valuable
material on the growth of the great industries with which he was
connected, but is decidedly nauseating to one who knows the truth
concerning the blood-dripping Armour millions. The department,
"Among the World's Workers," Is always full of the most important
facts of current industrial history, but is so condensed that a further
summary is almost impossible.
Andre Lebon has an article in "The International' Monthly" on the
"Situation of France in International Commerce," in which he con-
cludes that "from the standpoint of international competition the prin-
cipal articles for consumption offered upon the markets of the world
are no longer distinguished, for the most part, save by the (margin of
profits that they leave for their importers— that is, by
their cost price, or, to be still more exact, by the only variable ele-
ments of this price, namely, proximity to the raw materials, facilities
for supplying the motors of the mills, accommodation for transporta-
tion, etc." He is forced to admit that in all these natural qualities:
France is very deficient, and therefore concludes that henceforth she
must largely confine her activities to supplying articles of artistic and
ornamental character to the leisure class. Those who are interested
in the new revolutionary thought in education will be interested in
Prof. James Sully's "Child Study and Education," while the same
tendency in the field of biology finds expression in Prof. Thomas H.
Morgan's discussion of "The Problem of Development."
In the Journal of Sociology Miss Nellie Mason Austen has one of
the most thorough studies yet made of the sweating system in Chi-
cago. She shows that the wages paid are worse than ever alleged
by any alarmist. In only thirty out of fifty-two cases was the wages
as high as five cents an hour, while one "housewife pants finisher"
was earning five-elevenths of a cent per hour and many others almost
as little. Even these horrible pittances are steadily growing less,
wages in the sweating industry having fallen ten per cent during the
past year of prosperity. She makes the following significant obser-
vation: "Closely related with those who expect much from organiza-
tion of the workers are those who feel that the whole existing order
of society is unjust, and that the remedy is to be found in socialism,
a state of society in which each man shall have what he produces,
no more and no less. It is undoubtedly true that at present there to
a class who do little or nothing to add to the sum total of the world's
goods, yet who have the most. It is also true that many of those-
who work hardest have least. Something is wrong if these condition*
can exist; and whether or not the solution lies in the inauguration of
the socialistic state, it is a serious question whether, if it is true that
each person has a "right to be himself such as he is," he has not also
the right to have undiminished that which he produces^
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
«£
EDITORIAL
«*
A STUDY IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
Almost every day brings more startling rumors concerning the sit-
uation in China. More than three years ago socialist writers pointed
out that if the competitive system continued a great international
war must result, the contending parties to which would be determined
by the lines of economic cleavage. These lines naturally separated
the nations of capitalism into two great groups. On the one side is
semi-barbaric Russia, with a group of weaker nations united to her
by various ties. Opposed to her are the United States, England and
Japan, representing the height of capitalistic development.
That England and Russia are destined to come into armed conflict
is generally admitted by all students of the geography or the history
of these nations. The imminence of this titanic combat has been
pointed out over and over again and all manner of predictions offered
as to its probable outcome.
When the problem is approached from the point of view of scientific
inquiry, however, one is struck fully as much by the complexity as
the immensity of the factors involved. This complexity makes all
definite prophecy hopeless, and lends an elasticity to the relations
affected that makes countless combinations, evasions and delays pos-
sible before the striking of any decisive blow. On the other hand
many of the factors involved are of very sensitive and unstable char-
acter, making the whole combination highly explosive and liable to
go off in a most unexpected way.
When the opposing forces met in China, England and the United
States depended upon their superior competing power to found a
commercial supremacy, upon which a political supremacy could be
later based. For this reason they seek to enforce the principle of
"the open door." Russia, being still dominated by dreams of military,
territorial and political power, demands partition. Hence the con-
flict.
These various factors render the whole matter much more than a
mere test of naval, military, or what is often more fundamental to-day,
of financial strength, and all comparative figures along these lines,
such as have been filling the columns of the press for the last few
weeks, are practically meaningless. It is certain that no one nation
will enter the fight unaided. We have neither the knowledge or the
604
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDITORIAL 665
space at our disposal to enable us to enter the tangled maze of
European diplomacy and attempt to sketch the probable lines of future
alliances. Suffice to say that when Russia shifted her efforts at
expansion from Western Europe to Eastern Asia and put herself in
a hostile attitude toward Great Britain, she linked to herself by
various ties of interest the minor nations between her and the British
Isles.
One phase often overlooked is that from the beginning Russia will
to all intents and purposes fight as an ally of China. To be sure this
will be with the ultimate design of gobbling China, but such a process
will, from the Chinese point of view, be far less disturbing than
"benevolent assimilation" by any less barbaric or less Asiatic coun-
try. Just how much actual assistance such an alliance would afford
Russia It is hard to say. The Manchus and other North China people
have never yet proved themselves to be of much use as fighters, the
exploits of Gordon and the Black Flags being confined to the Canton
provinces, which are inhabited by a very different class of people.
But ir would at least give a greater extent of territory to be crossed
before the heart of Russia was reached, and the strongest defense of
that country has ever been its majestic distances, which swallow up
hostile armies.
On the other hand Russia has within her borders forces that may
prove more dangerous than foreign invasions. There, as everywhere,
tyranny has bred a fruitful progeny of revolutionary forces. With
every day that passes those forces become less violent and spasmodic,
but more determined, methodical and intelligent, and hence more
dangerous to the tyranny enthroned as constituted authority. Poland
is in a state of continuous revolt, and it is an open secret that her
oppressed people are only waiting for foreign complications to afford
them another opportunity to make one more desperate struggle for
liberty. In this effort they will surely receive the support of the
Finns who are at present bending under the double load of Russian
brutality and an industrial crisis brought on by American competition.
But if Russia has foes within herself, the same is no less true of
her opponents. While within the immediate confines of the British
Isles the revolutionary Spirit seems to have for the moment been
stifled and bribed into an easy going, comfortable opportunism, yet
such a condition cannot continue forever. The Englishman will stand
almost unlimited oppression with only an occasional growl, if only
it is done in a customary and established manner, but he will raise
a rebellion if an old method of procedure is violated. Now he has
long been taught that the one particular blessing for which he was
to "thank God that he was not like other men" was in his exemption
from "corn laws" and enforced military service. But an international
conflict would at once Introduce both the tariff and conscription, and
might easily prove the last straw that would cause the English
worker to throw off the whole load. There is little need to refer to
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666 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
the tremendous handicap created by the Boer war, as foreign com-
plications have been the last desperate hope of the burghers of the
Transvaal for many months. It is perhaps less generally known that
famines and official rapacity in India have built up another mass of
highly inflammable material that might be easily ignited by some
spark struck off in the clash of International interests.
These same internal complications will be found in almost every
land concerned. Even the workers of America, the most exploited
and most docile on earth, are beginning to revolt at the prospect of
bearing further burdens in support of a policy of international piracy.
It is a mistake, however, to suppose that the great capitalists of any
country desire an international war such as we are now describing.
Such a struggle would disturb trade and commerce, and consequently
exploitation, at a multitude of points. More important still, we have
seen that it might lead to international disturbances that might easily
mean the overthrow of the whole capitalist system. Such a struggle
is not a mere plundering expedition like the late Spanish-American
war or the British exploits in South Africa, or even the combined
piratical attack upon China. On the contrary it is the desperate
savage struggle among the robbers themselves. The great industries
devour their smaller neighbors until the supply of weaker victims
is exhausted, when they turn in cannibalistic fury upon each other
and fight until all but one is eaten, or a treaty of peace providing for
a truce and a trust is arranged.
These great combats are always avoided by the contending parties
and ended at the first favorable opportunity. The same will be true
regarding these national struggles. Every possible expedient will be
sought to postpone the inevitable conflict. But In this case no com-
plete combination is possible while capitalism remains. The only
thing that can check the oncoming of this frightful day of Armaged-
don is the rise of a socialist movement so powerful as to constitute
a bond of common interest sufficiently strong to curb the contending
passions of the kings of capitalism.
CAPITALISM IN THE UNIVERSITIES
The trouble at Leland Stanford University will not down, and there
is a prospect that we shall have an opportunity to apologize to the
professorial cult in America for our reflections in the last Issue upon
their lack of class consciousness. The American Economic Associa-
tion, which is the nearest approach to a trade union yet attained
among the professors, appointed a committee to Investigate the matter.
This committee summed the whole subject up in a somewhat pedantic
document, which "exonerated" Prof. Ross (as if he needed any such
action) and mildly condemned President Jordan for his contemptible
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDITORIAL 667
toadyism (which they of course gave a much milder name). Since
then two more professors, including Prof. Frank Fetter, who it is
rumored was slated for promotion to Prof. Ross* chair, have resigned.
This makes it certain that there were at least seven among the Stan-
ford faculty who had evolved far enough from the state of savagery
to begin to comprehend the meaning of social solidarity. In the
meantime the owners of the institution seem to have no difficulty in
securing scabs enough to fill all vacancies.
In this connection a recent occurrence in Chicago educational affairs
present some extremely interesting phases. These have not yet been
noticed in the capitalist press, and what we say here in regard to
the matter is entirely on our own responsibility without consultation
with or knowledge of the persons concerned. The facts to which we
refer are these: Prof. John Dewey of the pedagogical department
of the University of Chicago is perhaps the ablest living exponent of
the "new education" of freedom and development. Accepting the
full logic of his philosophy, he has pointed out Its sociological rela-
tions and close connection with the doctrines of socialism. Such a
man, whether consciously or unconsciously, is most effectively propa-
gating socialism. Indeed there is today no field more full of promise
of revolutionary action than that of education. It is but ascribing
ordinary intelligence to the defenders of capitalism to suppose that
they have already seen this and are seeking to side-track and emascu-
late this new revolutionary movement as they have all similar ones
in other fields. Now it so happens the man of all others most capable
of doing this Is in the city of Chicago. Col. Francis Parker Is widely
known as one of the foremost defenders of the new education, and
there is no denying that he is a master of its technique. His writings
and public utterances, however, show an almost childlike ignorance
of the wider philosophical and social relations of his subject He calls
himself an individualist and seems utterly unable to see that the
reason he has himself suffered petty persecution for his educational
work was because of its, to him unknown, hostile tendency toward
the established social order. But the new education, like the com-
parative method and economic interpretation in history, realism in
literature and art, and evolution in science is bound to come and the
shrewdest representatives of capitalism are now only seeking to divert
it and render it as harmless as possible. Hence we were not at all
surprised to learn that the Emmons Blaine School of Pedagogy was
to be affiliated with the University of Chicago and that Prof. Dewey
was to be relegated to a subordinate position, his wonderful model
school disbanded and, in general, his power for good to the cause of
progress and injury to capitalism be destroyed. It is possible that
this is but a mere accident incident to the process of consolidation,
but if so it was a remarkably lucky chance for capitalism, and when
we remember whose hand shook the throw we are naturally sus-
picious of loaded dice.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
668 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
American methods of propaganda, like American socialism, must be
the most advanced in the world in order to properly reflect and combat
the most advanced capitalism. Hence it is peculiarly fitting to learn
that the Minnesota socialists are arranging to send an automobile on
a propaganda tour during the coming summer. By this means they
will avoid the high railroad fares and hotel bills, and at the same
time will reach a section of the population hitherto largely untouched
by socialist propaganda and one which is now more than ready for It
The intelligence of the rural population and of the residents of small
towns in this country is higher than in any other country in the world,
and nowhere are they more ready for socialism. These are the ones
who will be reached by such a propaganda and who can scarcely be
reached in any other way. The Minnesota comrades have been par-
ticularly fortunate in securing G. F. Lockwood and wife, who have
been engaged in this form of agitation for some years with £*reat
success. One thousand dollars are necessary for the equipment of the
outfit, and about one-half of this amount has been raised. Contribu-
tions to make up the remander are requested, and may be sent to G. F.
Lockwood, 2615 Nicollet avenue, Minneapolis, Minn.
"Mother Jones" writes us concerning her article for this number:
"I am worked to death. Will you let me off this month? I will give you
a good article next month." Those of our readers who know the heroic
fight she has been making in behalf of the Scranton silk mill girls will
realize how genuine her excuse is. Our next number will be a "First of
May number," and will contain articles from all over the world, giving
the most complete "bird's-eye view" of the international socialist move-
ment ever compiled. Articles have already been promised from Den-
mark, Italy, France, England and several other countries, by the repre-
sentative socialist writers of these countries. Nor will the United States
be neglected, for articles have been promised by prominent socialist
writers in all parts of the country, giving a summary of conditions in the
socialist movement in their localities. This number will be of great per-
manent value and all socialist sections should secure a supply for future
sale. Write for special terms to socialist organizations. Newsdealers
should also take note and increase their regular orders.
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
Our Co-operative Publishing Business
HOW SOCIALIST LITERATURE IS BE-
ING CIRCULATED BY SOCIALISTS.
The International Socialist Review,
the Pocket Library of Socialism, the
Library of Progress and our other
socialist literature are owned, pub-
lished and circulated, not by any one
or two individuals, but by a co-opera-
tive company, consisting: of a rapidly
growing number of socialists, already
exceeding two hundred, and most of
whom have invested just ten dollars
each. In answer to many inquiries
from our co-operators and from other
friends who are interested in our work
and who are thinking of becoming
members of the company, we shall try
in this article to give a fuller account
of our work than has yet appeared
in print.
The publishing business carried on
under the name of Charles H. Kerr &
Company was established in 1886, but
for the first seven years its publica-
tions were in the line of "a religion
that is rational and a rationalism that
Is religious," rather than on economic
or social lines.
In 1893 the business was incorpor-
ated, without change of name, under
the Illinois laws, with an authorized
capital of ten thousand dollars, di-
vided into 1,000 ten-dollar shares. We
began in that year the publication of
"New Occasions," the name of which
was afterwards changed to "The New
Time." This was a semi-populist,
semi-socialist magazine. Like numer-
ous other Americans, we were looking
for real socialism, but as yet knew
little about it. "The New Time," after
reaching a monthly circulation of over
30,000 copies, was separated from our
book business and passed into the
control of the editor, Mr. Adams, who
in the course of four months came to
the end of his resources and disap-
pointed his friends by transferring the
subscription list to the "Arena."
During the years 1893-1899 we pub-
lished a number of books, starting
with money reform, government bank-
ing, etc., and even taking in such
books on the border line of socialism
as "Merrle England," but our real
connection with the International So-
cialist movement began in the spring
of 1899, when the Workers' Call was
started In this city. We at once cul-
tivated fraternal relations with its
editor and writers, and In April be-
gan the publication of the Pocket
Library of Socialism, which has ap-
peared monthly ever since. Twenty-
five numbers have already appeared,
and the total number of copies printed
up to this time is 230,000, while editions
already ordered will shortly bring the
number up to 270,000.
In January, 1900, A. M. Simons be-
came vice-president of this company,
and in July we began the publication
of the International Socialist Review
under his editorship.
The first number of the Review ap-
peared July 1, 1900, with a list of
yearly subscribers already secured to
the number of about 800. This list has
now increased to about 3,500, in addi-
tion to an average monthly sale of as
many more copies, and both subscrip-
tions and sales are Increasing so rap-
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
670
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
idly that a monthly edition, of 10,000
copies will soon be necessary.
Among other socialist publications
issued by us within the last two years
may be mentioned English transla-
tions of Liebknecht's "Socialism" and
"No Compromise," Engel's "Socialism
Utopian and Scientific" and Kautsky's
Life of Engels, also the "Socialist
Campaign Book" and "Socialist Songs
with Music," not to speak of the im-
portant works now in press which are
announced on another page of this
Review.
How was the capital raised to do all
this?
About $500 was subscribed by a few
sympathizers who were able and will-
ing to put in comparatively large sums
to help the work, and somewhat more
came from comrades who paid $10 each
for individual shares of stock. The
money has not been used to pay run-
ning expenses; these have been met
by subscriptions to the Review and
sales of books. It has gone into edi-
tions of new books and into advertis-
ing which is daily increasing the cir-
culation of the Review.
It is interesting to note that not a
dollar of this stock was subscribed on
the promise of dividends nor on the
expectation of any profit on the labor
of others. The one inducement offered,
apart from the general motive of ex-
tending the socialist propaganda, is
the privilege of buying our literature
at cost, and it is an encouraging fact
that a number of locals of the Social
Democratic party have already sub-
scribed for stock and are using their
privilege to circulate Increasing quan-
tities of socialist literature at prices
far lower than have been made be-
fore. The following table will show
the exact location of our stockholders.
We do not publish names, for the rea-
son that publicity might endanger the
jobs of many of our friends, but any
socialist desiring the address of a
stockholder in his own town can get
It by addressing us with proper cre-
dentials from his S. D. P. organiza-
tion.
List of Postoffkes Where
Stockholders Are Located
ALABAMA— Branchville.
ALASKA— Douglas.
ARIZONA— Bisbee, Flagstaff, Safford.
ARKANSAS — Arkansas City, Hot
Springs.
CALIFORNIA — Colusa, Glen Ellen,
Healdsburg, Hemet, Independence,
Jamestown, Lemoore, Los Angeles
(three), Red Bluff, Virginia.
COLORADO— Arastra, ^Colorado City,
Globeville, Leadville, New Castle.
CONNECTICUT— Berlin, Gilderaleeve,
New Haven (two), Torrington.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA— George-
town, Washington (three).
FLORIDA— Gilm ore, Kissimmee, Mil-
ton.
GEORGIA— Fitzgerald, Ruskin.
IDAHO— Garnet, Gibbonsville, Wal-
lace.
ILLINOIS— Allerton, Caseyville, Chi-
cago (24), Crete, Galesburg, Kelths-
ville, Illiopolis, Jacksonville, Keiths-
burg, Morrison, Mt. Palatine, Pana,
Quincy, Woodburn.
INDIANA— Butler, Greenfield, Ham-
mond (two), Huntington, Indianapo-
lis, Terre Haute.
IOWA — Clarinda, Davenport, Des
Moines, Grinnell (two), Independence,
Lenox, Sioux City, Van Home.
KANSAS — Halstead, Kansas City
(two), Lawrence.
KENTUCKY — Covington, Louisville
(three), Newport, Paducah, Science
Hill.
MASSACHUSETTS— Boston, Brighton,
Dorchester, Fall River, Fitchburg,
Lawrence, Lynn (two), Newbury-
port, Springfield, Vineyard Haven.
MICHIGAN— Allegan, Detroit, Battle
Creek (two), Benton Harbor, Eaton
Rapids, Grand Rapids, Ithaca, Kala-
mazoo (two), Ludlngton, Ypsilanti.
MINNESOTA— Hubbard, Minneapolis
(four), St. Anthony Park, Tracy,
Two Harbors.
MISSOURI— Joplin, Kansas City, New
Madrid, St. Joseph, St. Louis (four),
Trenton.
MONTANA— Billings, Butte, Lewlston.
NEBRASKA — Bancroft, Columbus,
Harrlsburg, Omaha.
NEW HAMPSHIRE— Chesham, Dover,
Manchester.
NEW JERSEY— Orange, Passaic.
NEW YORK— Brooklyn, Daws, New
York (five), Port Jervis, Rochester,
Saranac Lake.
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OUR COOPERATIVE PUBLISHING BUSINESS
671
NORTH DAKOTA-Ouelph, Mayville,
Mlnot.
OHIO — Alliance, Cincinnati (two),
Cleveland, Crestline, Latty, Massilon,
Mechanlcsburg, New Waterford,
Salem, Springfield, Toledo.
OKLAHOMA— Augusta, El Reno, FI1-
son, Wardin.
OREGON— Baker City, Eugene, Ore-
gon City, Portland, Vernonia, Whit-
aker.
PENNSYLVANIA — Allegheny, Erie,
Brownsville, Franklin, New Castle,
Philadelphia (four), Pittsburg, Rodi,
Wallaceville.
RHODE ISLAND— Providence.
SOUTH DAKOTA— Gann Valley.
TENNESSEE— Harriman.
TEXAS— Blanco. Killen, Mason.
UTAH— Clinton, Eureka, Murray, Sun-
shine.
VIRGINIA— Newport News.
WASHINGTON— Fairhaven, Langley,
New Whatcom, Olympia, Parkland,
Snoqualmie, Spokane, Tacoma.
WEST VIRGINIA— McMechen, Ripley.
WISCONSIN— Milwaukee, Madison.
CANADA—
British Columbia— Slocan.
Manitoba — Winnipeg.
Nova Scotia— Halifax.
Ontario — Oolllngwood, Kagawong,
Malton.
The capital thus far subscribed is
very far from being enough to meet
the needs of the movement. Our
monthly book sales have increased
from $409.15 for February 1900 to
1864.65 In February 1901, not including
in the latter month the receipts of the
International Socialist Review, which
amounted to $395.49 more. But this is
only a hint of the Increase that is pos-
sible in the near future if we can have
the capital needed to advertise the
International Socialist Review as it
should be advertised, and to print the
new socialist books for which a ready
sale is almost certain as soon as they
can be placed on the market. Six
hundred shares at ten dollars each are
still unsold, and the six thousand dol-
lars that can be realized from their
sale, if our comrades act promptly,
will enable us to double and quadruple
the output of socialist literature and
to reduce our prices even below this
new scale now announced for the first
time.
All stockholders, both those already
holding stock and those who subscribe
In response to this notice, will here-
after be entitled to the following spe-
cial rates on book orders accompanied
by the cash. (Keeping accounts makes
needless expense):
Pocket Library of Socialism and
other five-cent books published by us
—Five thousand assorted copies, $30.00;
1,000 assorted copies, $8.00; 100 assorted
copies, $1.00; smaller lots two cents a
copy.
Ten-cent books — One thousand as-
sorted copies (freight at purchaser's
expense) $30.00; 100 assorted copies,
$3.50; 25 assorted copies, $1.00; smaller
lots, five cents a copy.
Other paper-covered books in hun-
dred lots (freight at purchaser's ex-
pense) sixty per cent discount from list
prices; In smaller lots, fifty per cent
discount.
Cloth-bound books if sent at pur-
chaser's expense, fifty per cent dis-
count; if sent at our expense, forty
per cent discount.
These rates apply only to books now
published or hereafter to be published
by ourselves. We shall as an accom-
modation to our customers supply
other socialist books, but as we have
to buy them of the various publishers
at small discounts and as the labor in-
volved Is considerable, we cannot at
present offer any reduction from re-
tail prices on books of other publish-
ers.
It is our hope and purpose to publish
as fast as the work can be done a
line of cloth-bound hooks to be known
as the Standard Socialist Series, which
will keep American readers in touch
with the latest and most thoroughly
scientific thought of the world, and
at the same time will be readily
understood by any attentive reader.
We can now definitely promise the
first two numbers of the series early
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
67a
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
In May. One will be Liebknecht's
Life of Marx, described on page 689
of last month's Review. Even social-
ists usually think of Marx as a mere
student, philosopher and critic. This
book of Liebknecht's personal recol-
lections of Marx, dealing mainly with
the period of exile in London, shows
Marx the man, his heroism through
years of discouragement and persecu-
tion, his energy and steadfastness* his
warm human sympathy and the at-
mosphere of love radiating from his
home. The book supplies an indispen-
sable chapter in the history of social-
ism.
We can also promise for publication
in May the translation by Charles H.
Kerr of Vandervelde's "Collectivism
and Industrial Evolution," the table
of contents of which is printed on page
688. We have Just received Professor
Vandervelde's manuscript of his pre-
face to our edition, in which he says:
"At the hour when the United States,
finishing their industrial evolution,
penetrating as victors into the mar-
kets of Europe, joining the capitalist
crusade in the Orient, are mingling
more and more in the concert of the
powers of the old world, it is impera-
tively necessary that the socialists of
Europe and America come into closer
and closer touch with each other, learn
to know each other better and better,
and In so far as the diversity of en-
vironment may be reconciled with
their eommon aspirations, unify their
international propaganda against in-
ternational exploitation."
Still another work of prime impor-
tance, which we hope to have ready
early in June, is Engel's "Origin of the
Family," translated by Professor Un-
termann. Space forbids a detailed de-
scription this month.
These three books, soon to be fol-
lowed by others, will be issued In neat
cloth binding and in convenient shape
for the pocket, the size of page being
that of the Pocket Library of Social-
ism. The retail price will be fifty
cents a copy and the price to stock-
holders twenty-five cents.
There are other important books
which we shall publish as soon as the
stock subscriptions justify us in un-
dertaking the expense, among them a
translation of Professor Vandervelde's
"Socialism and Belgium" and an orig-
inal work by A. M. Simons on the
Future of the American Farmer.
We have tried to show that every
dollar Invested in our company will
bring large returns in two ways: first,
to the local work of the comrade or
the socialist club which pays for a
share of stock, by the privilege It se-
cures of buying socialist literature at
the lowest possible prices; second, to
the general work of socialist propa-
ganda, by still further increasing our
output of socialist literature.
If you individually cannot spare ten
dollars, get other comrades to join
with you in sending for a share of
stock. It will have to be issued in
one name for voting purposes, but
each of you can have the privilege of
buying books at reduced prices.
Do not put this matter off. Now is
the time the money is needed. Send
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56 Fifth Avenue, Chicago.
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
T25 INTERNATIONAL
SOCIALIST REVIEW
VoL I MAY, xgox No. zz
The Labor Movement in Great Britain
O understand the labor movement aright it is neces-
sary to know of what it is composed. There are
in this country several distinctively working class
organizations, all of them exercising an influ-
ence after their kind on working class life and thought.
The wage-earners are estimated to number 14,000,000,
of whom one man in four and one woman in ten are mem-
bers of a trade union. The total membership is, roughly, 2,500,*
000, and the reserve funds amount to £3,500,000. Several of the
miners' unions have a parliamentary fund, and they have at
present five representatives in the House of Commons.
The Miners' Federation of Great Britain is at present bal-
loting its members on a proposal to contribute one shilling a
year towards a labor representation fund, and W. B. Pickard,
M. P., the president, stated in his presidential address, that if
this be carried, the miners will nominate seventy candidates
next election. The engineers, the shipwrights, the steel and
ironworkers, the gasworkers and other unions have also par-
liamentary funds. (It may perhaps be necessary to remind
some of your readers that the whole of the cost of an election,
together with the maintenance of a member when elected, has
to be borne from private resources* since the nation neither
pays the cost of the election nor provides a salary for mem-
bers of Parliament). The co-operative movement has a mem-
bership of close upon 1,500,000, a yearly turnover in distribu-
tion of more than £20,000,000 sterling, and is in addition doing
a very large productive business. Parliamentary representa-
tion is a stock subject of discussion at its annual congress and
several of its leading members were accepted as Liberal can-
didates at last election, although none of them were successful
in getting returned. In Scotland the movement is actively iden-
078
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674 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
tified with the labor representation committee, of which more
anon.
I pass over the Friends' Society movement, great and power-
ful though it be, for the reason that it is in no sense, nor ever
likely to become, political.
Socialism is represented by three organizations — the Fabian
Society, mainly educational, and as such of great service to
the movement; the Social Democratic Federation, mainly a
London organization, and the Independent Labor party. In
its early days the S. D. F. attracted to its ranks the best minds
in the movement, but somehow it could not retain them. In
these days it was neither distinctly political nor definitely revo-
lutionary, but a cross between the two which was a continual
cause of internal friction. For years it was to trade unionism
what De Leonism was in America in 1896.
In 1893 the I. L. P. was formed, in the main, by leading trade
unionists who were socialists but who for one reason or another
would not identify themselves with the existing organization,
and from then until now it has borne the brunt of the fighting,
whether as regards parliamentary or municipal contests. Its
example and influence has so molded the work of the S. D. F.
that the differences between the methods of the two organiza^
tions are no longer so pronounced as they were a few years
ago.
From the outstart of its career the I. L. P. has recognized
the great potential force with which the trade union and co-
operative movements are charged and has sought for a com-
mon ground of action among those who hold so much in com-
mon, whilst carrying on an unceasing socialist campaign by
means of the platform and the press, embracing the smallest
villages in the central parts of England, as well as the big cen-
ters of population all over the country, and whilst holding itself
above suspicion in its political independence, the I. L. P. has
yet sought to secure political allies for independent action in
the trade union and co-operative movements.
So much by way of necessary introduction that your readers
may the better understand what follows.
I use the term labor movement advisedly. Like the late
Caesar de Pape, labor seems to me more comprehensive than
socialist. I may best explain my point of view by saying that
socialism is a body of doctrine upon which and out of which the
labor movement grows and is built up. My purpose, however,
in this article is to describe the present position of the political
labor movement in Great Britain. Like all working-class move-
ments it has gradually evolved itself. Twenty-five years ago an
attempt was made to organize a Labor Representation League
and a few of its members succeeded in being returned to Par-
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LABOR MO VEMENT IN GRMA T BRITAIN 675
liament. Once there, however, they settled down into com-
fortable commonplace party followers. The movement was
purely political in those days, and had for its aim the exten-
sion of the franchise.
Various spasmodic attempts to create a labor party followed,
but no marked success was attained. In 1887 the trades union
congress tried its hand at a labor party and for a few years the
outcome of the attempt struggled along, but finally died of in-
anition. It had as its basis a platform partly economic, partly
political ; the political, however, largely predominated.
This state of affairs continued down to 1893, when the Inde-
pendent Labor party as a national organization was definitely
formed. At a conference held to form a national organization
that year over 120 representatives from trades unions, socialist
societies and other movements in favor of labor representation
attended, and it was unanimously agreed, first, that the pro->
gram should be distinctly socialistic, and second, that the polit-
ical side of the movement should be conducted on absolutely
independent lines. Those who affirm, as some do, that the
Independent Labor party thus created has only gradually
evolved into a socialist organization are either ignorant of the
facts or not above misrepresenting them. I quote here the
declaration carried at this first conference:
"That the object of the Independent Labor party shall
be to secure the collective ownership of all the means of
production, distribution and exchange."
From that declaration it has never varied, and the whole of
its propaganda has been conducted on definitely socialist lines.
The formation of the Independent Labor party marks a very
distinct stage in the evolution of the Socialist Labor party. It
was not, however, until 1899 that the trades union congress
formally and authoritatively endorsed the position of the Inde-
pendent Labor party by carrying a resolution in favor of what
practically amounts to a federation of all existing socialist, trade
union and other working class organizations willing to co-oper-
ate in securing the return of labor members to the House of
Commons. The trades union movement with us, as seems to
be pretty much the case still in America, was for years in the
hands of men who did not believe in a separate labor party, at
least not in practice. They endeavored to keep the trade union
movement clear of politics by taking sides with one or other of
the existing orthodox political paties and denouncing thosd
who sought to form a real labor party. Bit by bit, however,
the rank and file came to realize the absurdity of this position
with the result outlined above.
.It may be of interest to your readers to describe the actual
working basis upon which trade unionists, socialists and co-
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676 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
operators are finding common ground of action in politics. To
begin with, these three movements are, more or less, agreed
on the necessity for having direct representation in Parliament.
That being so, the question arose how each could aid the others
in the matter. It was felt that without all-round co-operation
there was not much chance of success for any. It was further
recognized that if any section sought to bind the other sections
to accept any dogma of its own, the result would be continued
chaos. After much conferring it was finally determined that
when an organization affiliated to the labor representation com-
mittee, which is composed of representatives from socialist bod-
ies, trade unions and the co-operative movement, decided upon
putting up a candidate for election to Parliament, the organiza-
tion nominating the candidate should select him, be financially
responsible for the conduct of the election, and decide upon his
program, or platform, whilst the candidate himself would be
pledged if returned to the House of Commons to assist in form-
ing a separate labor group in the House, having its own whips,
deciding upon its own policy, prepared to co-operate with any
party which for the time being is promoting legislation in the
interests of labor or to oppose any party going in the opposite
direction. This may not seem a very heroic policy, and yet
it is all that is needed to secure the development of a definite
socialist group, not only in Parliament but on all local govern-
ing bodies. Such a group in the House of Commons, no mat-
ter how heterogeneous its elements, would find itself drawn
closer and closer together as time went on by being continually
compelled to co-operate, either in promoting certain definite
objects of legislation or in opposing such when put forward by
a reactionary government. Not only so, but its socialism must
become increasingly definite with the years.
Those of us who believe that there is no other solution to the
labor problem save that which socialism offers know that just
as our propaganda work has its effect so will the men who are
selected by trades unions as labor candidates be more and more
imbued with the socialist ideal. If, however, an attempt was
made at this moment to lay down a hard and fast principle that
only socialists were to be eligible as candidates to the new labor
group the result would be to bar out a very large number of
able, conscientious men and also to prevent that cohesion with-
out which practically no progress at all is possible.
Your readers will do well to bear in mind that the methods ol
election in this country are so altogether different from those
which prevail in America that we have no means of testing
nationally what is the strength of any particular movement.
The only way in which an approximate idea can be obtained is
to run a number of candidates for constituencies in different
parts of the country, and then take the results in those constit-
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LABOR MO VEMEN1 IN GREA T BRITAIN 677
uencies as an indication of the state of feeling prevailing over
all. The House of Commons is composed of 670 members,
and the country is divided up into say 650 separate constitu-
encies, a few of which return two members, but the greater
bulk only one.
At the last election, then, eighteen candidates submitted
themselves for election, either directly under the auspices of the
labor representation committee or under conditions similar
to those laid down by the committee. It should, be borne in
mind that the circumstances under which they fought were not
favorable to success. For four or five years trade has been
exceptionally good, work plentiful, wages high. Under such
conditions social and labor problems are apt to be forgotten,
and by none more than by the working class itself. In addi-
tion the war fever was very high at the time and every one of
the candidates was either pronouncedly pro-Boer or at least
opposed to the war. The result of the election was that three
of the candidates were successful, and the total vote recorded
for the eighteen was 76,906 out of a grand total of 206,920 cast
in the divisions for which the candidates were put forward.
I do not claim for a moment that all these were socialist voters,
but it cannot be denied that they were all convinced of the
necessity for a separate labor party in Parliament and most of
them must have had sufficient intelligence to know that that
£roup could not fail to be dominated by Socialist thought and
influence. In one case the I. L. P. candidate was only forty-
two votes behind his successful opponent, and in several others
a change of a few hundred voters from one side to the other
would have given our man the victory. Of the eighteen candi-
dates thirteen were members of the Independent Labor party,
two of the Social Democratic Federation — all of these ran as
avowed socialists — two were trade unionists and one the nom-
inee of the trade unionists although not himself a worker.
But for the fact that the election was sprung upon the country
unexpectedly and was fought upon an old register, the results
for us would have been much better. ,
Taken as a whole there is good reason for being satisfied
with the result of the experiment in uniting the forces of labor.
There are two labor representation committees — one for Scot-
land and another for England — and the trade unions affiliated
With them have a combined membership of over 500,000. Sev-
eral of the large unions outside the committee have, as already
stated, labor representation funds, and the adhesion of these
is only a question of time. There is more political solidarity
throughout the working class movement here than has been
witnessed since the days of the Chartists, and it is growing
daily. The period of trade depression upon which we have
entered and which threatens to be severe and prolonged, wilt
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
678 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIEW
tell powerfully in our favor. Our stand against the war will
also bring us support, as it has already done, and altogether
there is good reason for hoping that by the exercise of some
tact and patience the next general election, which may come
soon, will find the Labor party in a position of such strength
as will insure the return of a decent group of representatives
to the next Parliament. Twelve members of the present Par-
liament are drawn from the working class. Of these three are
from Ireland. How far co-operation on a militant policy can
be secured remains to be put to the test. Were they to make
a definite and pronounced stand upon labor questions the effect
upon working class opinion would be very great. More than
that I do not care to say at present. One always likes to hope
for the best.
Meanwhile the socialist propaganda is in full, swing. Since
the general election there has been a distinct revival of activ-
ity. The Independent Labor party is organizing a big cam-
paign for this year and is raisjng a special guarantee fund of
£1,000 foj this purpose alone. I desire it to be clearly under-
stood that whilst we have been working, and intend continuing
to do so, for political union at election times, we are not neg-
lecting nor abating one jot of our definite socialist work. The
principles of socialism are permeating all ranks and classes.
The criminal war the country is waging in South Africa at the
behest and in the interests of a gang of high financiers is awak-
ening thoughtful people to the menace which uncontrolled cap-
italism carries in its train. Already £100,000,000 have been
spent upon Jthe war and 80,000 lives lost or wasted, and as an
outcome it looks at the moment of writing as if South Africa
was lost to the British beyond the possibility of recall. Our
growth towards socialism will be slower than with you — a fact
due to differences in temperament and circumstance, but its
coming is none the less irresistibly certain.
/. Kiev Hardie, M. P,
Editor of The Labor Leader.
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Socialism in Italy
HE methods of propaganda, agitation and organiza-
tion employed by Italian socialists vary according to
the wide and profound differences in the physical,
economic and social conditions of the Italian pop-
ulation. Italy unites by the ties of a national conscience two
countries, different in customs, civilization and race. Com-
pared to the North, the South of Italy presents a veritable
social atavism, reflecting in the majority of its ideas a sentiment
worthy of the civilization of past centuries. I do not wish to
dwell on the anthropological and psychological differences which
are marked and aggravated by the climate and by the lowest
possible level of subsistence. Limiting myself to the subject of
organization in keeping with modern progress, I can say with
Niceforo* that "among the Aryans of the North, the individ-
uals are easily organized into bodies and held by discipline;
but among the dark-skinned Mediterranean population, such
work is impossible. For there the individual, swayed by his
restless and emotional ego, will not and cannot be assimilated
by large bodies. We can, therefore, understand how this
Southern population, passionate, individualistic in the highest
degree, excited by the light and heat of the sun, unfit for
adaptation to collective organization, could become great when
forced to submit to the despotism of the Greek and Latin rulers
who stifled the will of the individual. But under a democratic
government they are incapable of that united action to which
despotism compelled them."
In view of this we can understand why the organization of a
class-conscious party, so flourishing in northern and middle
Italy, is so difficult in the South, where the industry is almost
sporadic; why the activity of socialists in the South is mainly
concentrated on the effort to eradicate the effects of those two
social phenomena, the MaMa and the Camorra, which are among
the consequences and survivals of feudal despotism. The whole
public life is saturated with them ; elections, municipal adminis-
trations, the attitude of representatives in the Chamber, etc.
The result, complicated by economic misery, is distressing in
the extreme. This state of barbarism hinders all improve-
ment of economic conditions in those regions. In consequence
no elevation of the intellectual and moral level of the laboring
classes, no effective propaganda or education is possible. This
accounts for the vigorous efforts of the socialists to expose the
•A. Nioeferro, Italian! del Nord e Italianl del Su<L Torino, Bocca, 1901.
879
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
680 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
tricks and the immorality of the bourgeoisie. The latter main-
tains its power in the municipalities by exploiting the Camorra,
the Mafha and the submissive spirit of the wretched masses.
The socialist campaign, opened by the party press, often finds
its conclusion in court with the condemnation of the socialists.
Although the proofs collected by the latter are numerous and
conclusive, still the judges manage to evade them by legal
tricks. Of three cases tested by the socialists — Taka versus
Senator Paterno, De Felice versus Senator Codronchi, and
"Propaganda" (the organ of the Neapolitan socialists) versus
Deputy Cassale — only the latter ended in the condemnation of
the chief of the Camorra. The other two cases brought sen-
tences to the socialists, in spite of the fact that the judges had
to admit the truth of the indictments and the perpetration of the
crimes!
However, the socialists are not discouraged by these partial
reverses. Nor do they entirely abandon all attempts to organ-
ize class-conscious bodies. In the South and in Sicily political
groups of socialists are quite numerous and in Naples a recent
strike was even carried to victory.*
But who can speak of a class struggle and hope to be under-
stood by the laborers of Apulia, thousands of whom are subsist-
ing on nothing but the boiled roots of trees, and demanding
work at 20 centesimi (4 cents) per day? Who will speak of
class-consciousness to the industrial laborers of Palermo who,
duped by the employers' council, strike and make violent dem-
onstrations in order to embarrass the government and prevail
on the Chamber of Deputies to vote premiums for the con-
struction of merchant vessels, premiums that are pocketed
by the industrials at the expense of the Italian consumers? We
do not exaggerate by affirming that socialists carry on their
propaganda in the South at the imminent risk of their daily
bread, often of their liberty and sometimes of their life.
On the other hand, in northern and middle Italy, where the
social spirit is better developed by the side of an industrial
evolution and where economic conditions are on a higher level,
the movements of the socialists are different and many-sided.
The political groups form the local centers of the nervous sys-
tem of the socialist party. On the first of September, 1900,
there were 546 locals with 19,194 members,-and at present there
are 783 locals with 29,497 members paying dues. Popular uni-
versities that give evening classes and scientific and sociologi-
cal lectures to the laborers are now established in nearly every
large town as a result of socialist propaganda. The distribution
of free meals to poor pupils, now introduced by several munici-
* The longshoremen of Naples, In connection with the strikers in Marseilles, France*
refused to discharge the vessels coming from the latter port. In Genoa the same course
> as adopted.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
SOCIALISM IN ITAL Y «81
palities, is likewise due to socialist activity. To-day, even con-
servatives advocate this measure. In industrial centers social-
ists form unions for the purpose of keeping up wages, and
labor exchanges (camere del lavoro) with a view to giving
unity to the actions of workingmen's organizations and for
assistance in strikes. In Milan, a "Maison du Peuple" will soon
be opened.
Most interesting is the work of organizing the rural popula-
tion. Along the whole immense coast between the Po and the
Rubicon — the two famous rivers, one known for its grandeur,
the other through its historical role — between the Appennines
and the Adriatic, socialist propaganda has taken root in the
form of agricultural laborers' organizations that differ in char-
acter according to the various conditions of the farmers.
The farm laborers of the province of Mantua have organized
a league of amelioration (Leghe di Miglioramento) with a mem-
bership of 17,000, that will reach from 30,000 to 40,000 in a
few months. Their purpose is to obtain higher wages from the
land owners. To-day men receive at best 1 fr. (20 cents) per
day in winter time and 1.70 fr. (34 cents) in summer time. Wo-
men work ten to twelve hours a day for 60 to 70 centesimi (12
to 14 cents), standing in boggy fields under the scorching rays
of an August sun or in the chilly rain of an April morning.
Furthermore, twenty-five co-operatives for consumers are
distributing groceries to the rural population of that region.
The results of this movement, that forms a topic for discus-
sion even in the capitalist press, are already very appreciable
from an economic, political and social standpoint. Under the
pressure of the laborers' demands the landowners were forced
to improve the tillage of the soil and to increase its productivity
by the help of machinery, chemical fertilizers, etc. Plundering
of fields, gambling and drunkenness have almost disappeared
among the laborers. The spirit of association has surprisingly
developed in them; in certain localities to such a degree that
the proceeds of labor are at the end of the week equally and
equitably divided among young men and old, among strong
and weak. Even their political consciousness has evolved ; for
when the employers argue their inability to increase the wages
of the laborers, the latter reply: "Well, unite like we do and
resist the demand of the government for taxes ! Refuse your
assistance and your vote to the demand for funds to support
an army that crushes us !"
In the province of Reggio Emilio where small proprietors
and tenant farmers are more numerous, sixteen consumers'
co-operative societies were formed. There is also a co-opera-
tive for the purchase of agricultural implements, fertilizers,
etc., and for the sale of the products.
In the provinces of Forli and Ravenna in Romagna, where
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^
683 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
the tenant system is the only form of contract in use, brother-
hoods (Fratellanze) of several thousand members were formed.
Their purpose is to obtain from the employers a revision of the
contract system and its modification in a sense that will benefit
the laborers.
In Montferrato (Piedmont), where small vineyard owners
are very frequent, co-operatives of consumers and buyers were
organized, and associations regulating the handling of grapes
and sale of wine with a view to abolishing the exploitation of
the producer by the middleman and the wholesale dealer.
To protect the lives, to improve the physical condition of the
farm laborers by raising their wages and increasing the yield
of the soil, to educate their intellects, to awaken the spirit of
solidarity and to make them conscious of their rights as a class
— these are the ends to which socialist activity among the rural
population must be directed.
I now come to the political work that has been accomplished
in the country and in the parliament by the twenty-eight
socialist deputies. It is no exaggeration to say that since the
sad days of May 1898 there is not a fight against the forces of
reaction, not a contest in the parliament, but was led by the
group of socialists that form the extreme left, assisted by re-
publicans and radicals. Even the solution of the late cabinet
crisis in an almost democratic sense is due to the energy of the
socialist deputies. After the spirited campaign of obstruction
maintained by the extreme left for the purpose of defeating the
attacks of the reaction, we finally arrived at the Saracco minis-
try, on which devolved the duty of removing the sad debris of
the reactionary period. But like all such transitional govern-
ments, this cabinet was ever balancing itself, without bringing
any actual results, between the pretentious demands of the still
reactionary majority of employers and the alertness of the ex-
treme left that was always ready to obstruct a backward move-
ment. At last the government found itself in a trap when the
strike of the longshoremen in Genoa broke out a day after the
pfefect had ordered the closing of the Labor Exchange. After
a splendid fight, the extreme left, always led by the socialists,
brought about the downfall of the cabinet that had permitted
the closing of the Labor Exchange in violation of the laborers'
right of association. Better still is the complete rout of the
reactionary center and the extreme right who upbraided the
government for its lack of energy in suppressing the strike.
After eight years of continual parliamentary crises, a sufficiently
clear vote of the Chamber was obtained and the king forced to
call the liberals into power, restricting them somewhat by some
member of the right. Even pending the solution of the crisis,
the extreme left remained active. The liberals, Zanardelli and
Giolitti, unable to dispense with the help of the extreme left,
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
SOCIALISM IN ITAL Y 683
invited the radicals to enter the cabinet. But these demanded
as the first indispensable condition the curtailing of military
expenses. Now the king had made it a condition sine qua non
that the military budget should remain inviolate and that the
old ministers of war and marine should be retained. Therefore
the radicals declined to accept the invitation. Thus the country
had an opportunity to learn that the real obstacle to a more
rational policy in harmony with the economic needs and re-
sources of the land is the military budget on which the king
and the adherents of militarism, still strong in Parliament,
obstinately insist, even to the point of renewing the triple alli-
ance with Germany and Austria-Hungary. From now on, how-
ever, the socialist party will inaugurate a campaign for anti-
militarism. For the military moloch is the veritable enemy of
all financial and economic progress and improvement in Italy.
Just at the present time economic life begins to awake and to
grow in the North, but the military budget crushes it in the
bud. In order to understand this it is sufficient to examine the
following table showing how the increase in the budgets of the
five great European powers from 1876 to 1900 was spent. The
numbers indicate millions:
Expenses.
In
1876
In :89fi
1900
Disbursement of
the Increase.
**■ as *£%>
Milita-
Public
Italy
England. . . .
France
Germany...
Austria I
Hungary f*
1280
2015
8400
1817
1665
8118
8684
5078
2891
885
1108
1045
2678
1274
172
450
212
187
887
806
505
182
76
766
740
1718
980
It follows from these figures that Italy has done precisely
the reverse of what civilized countries are doing, viz.: it has
increased the military expenses and reduced the expenses for
public services that really contribute to progress and civiliza-
tion.
Still another battle was fought by the socialists in parlia-
ment for the reduction of the price of bread and grain which
is higher in Italy than in any other European country, thanks
to the import duty of 7.50 fr. ($1.50) per 100 pounds. This
fee to agrarian protectionism has brought to the state a revenue
of four hundred and ninety millions in fourteen years and
stinted the stomachs of the consumers in order to present the
landed proprietors with three billions. But not one hectar of
land planted in grain has been added, and the yield per hectar
has remained the same. The Italian farmer consumes only
92 grams of albumen per day, while according to Voit the min-
imum should be 118; assimilates only 67 grams when the mini-
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684 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
mum should be 105. In the United States the laborer con-
sumes 100 to 220 grams of albumen per day.
This has not hindered the majority of the Chamber from de-
feating the bill of the socialists to abolish the duty on grain,
although certain conservative agrarians admitted that this pro-
tectionism is "theoretically doomed." The socialists in turn
will not be prevented from renewing their campaign more vig-
orously than ever, confident of victory next year.
Other measures advocated by the socialists in speech and in
writing through their fifty-two weeklies and their daily "Avanti"
are:
A bill regulating the length of the working day for women
and children and providing for their protection.
A divorce law.
Bills for the application of the law instituting prud'hommes
and for providing insurance against accidents to those farm
laborers and seamen who are at present excluded from such
benefits.
It will also not be long before the fight against the priests
will be taken up. The latter are the deadliest enemies of social-
ist propaganda in the country districts. We had even in this
country a rising school of Christian socialists, who assumed
the aspect and character of socialists in mingling with the la-
borers in their recreations. But the last encyclica of the Pope
has torn the mask from their faces. They sought refuge under
the wings of Santa Madre Chiesa (Holy Mother Church) and
when challenged by socialists to debate they were forced to
avow their conservative and anti-socialistic spirit, just as the
Jesuits and the employers were before them. Their church
takes its revenge by excommunicating the "Giustizia" (Justice)
of that apostle of Italian socialism, Camillo Prampolini.
But the era of autos da fe? is passed, and to the superannuated
phrase of "ad majoretn Dei gloriam" we reply by the cry : "Hur-
rah for socialism I Hurrah for the International Union of
workers I"
Alessandro Schiavi.
Rome, March 24, 1901.
(Translated by E. Untermann.)
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Socialism in Canada
HE Canadian Socialist movement is in a similar posi-
tion to that of the child learning to walk. The move-
ment has been born, it has passed through the crawl-
ing stage, it has taken a few steps and had a few tum-
bles, and in the swift evolution of events it will soon be beyond
the walking and into the running stage.
From a historical standpoint it would be difficult to name a
commencing point. Canada was originally taken from the In-
dians by the French, and after the defeat of the French by the
English the country was used as a retreat for the ultra-loyal
persons who preferred to live under the government of King
George rather than under the presidency of George Washing-
ton. For half a century after the American revolution this
class misgoverned Canada and "divided up" the new country
amongst the members of their families. In 1837, the radical
pioneers of Upper and Lower Canada rebelled against the auto-
cratic manner in which they were governed, and although the
rebellion was unsuccessful in overturning the government, it
succeeded in establishing more democratic political conditions.
Many of the descendants of the rebels of 1837 are taking an ac-
tive part in socialist propaganda in 1901, the grandfather of the
writer being one who had the honor of serving three months
in jail as a rebel.
In early days the privately-owned tollroads were the only
means of inland transportation, but the public ownership idea
grew apace and when in 1867 the various provinces federated
into the Dominion of Canada, the postoffice and most of the
roadways had been nationalized. Since that time progress has
been made in many directions. Municipalities have established
water, power and lighting plants, public libraries, etc., and the
municipal initiative and referendum has been introduced. Pro-
vinces have established public schools and state universities and
the federal government owns and operates the canal system of
the country together with the Intercolonial railroad running
from Montreal, Quebec, to Halifax, Nova Scotia. It also re-
cently built a government telegraph line 800 miles long in
British Columbia, over which messages can be sent for one-
tenth the charges made on private lines ; and it is expected that
within a year the government will nationalize the entire tele-
graph system of the country, a clause in the existing charters
giving the government power to do this upon ninety days*
notice.
Although no socialist has yet been elected to parliament or
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886 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
legislature in Canada, the public ownership principle has found
several advocates amongst progressive men in the old capital-
istic parties, some of whom have accepted the name socialist in
parliamentary debates. Canadian socialists are alert, however,
in pointing out the great distinction between "government"
and "public" ownership and in reiterating the socialist demand
for the complete public ownership of all the means of produc-
tion and distribution as the only cure for the evils of the com-
petitive system.
The first organized socialist movement in Canada was in-
spired by Bellamy's "Looking Backward," and several "Nation-
alist" Clubs were formed. Previous to this the Knights of
Labor political movement had done considerable educational
work amongst the partisans in the cities and towns, and a few
years later the Patrons of Industry did similar work for the
farmers by organizing them for political and educational pur-
poses. The "Canada Labor Courier," St. Thomas ;"Palladuim,"
Hamilton; "Labor Reformer," and "Canada Farmers' Sun,"
Toronto, amongst other papers did good educational work, and
in the natural course of events died from the lack of support.
Other minor movements which have come and gone are the
Anti-Poverty Society, Producers' Exchange, Henry George
Club, Social Reform League, and the Canadian Co-operative
Commonwealth, the latter of which for a short time published
"The Searchlight" at London.
Following the Nationalist Club and the old Canadian Social-
ist League in Toronto, sections of the Socialist Labor Party
were organized in Toronto and London about 1894, and later
on three sections were organized in Montreal, Quebec, and one
each in Halifax, N. S., Winnipeg, Man., Vancouver, B. C, and
Hamilton, Brantford and Ottawa in Ontario. Of these four
are still in existence, and the "Cause of Labor," a monthly
pamphlet published at Halifax, N. S., is the national organ,
the "Commonwealth," Montreal, Quebec, and "Better Times,"
Brantford, not now being published. The Canadian sections
of the S. L. P. have followed the DeLeonites of the United
States in their attitude of refusing to allow officers of trades
unions to join their ranks, and this action, together with their
severe criticism of all who cannot see eye to eye with them, has
made the growth of their organization almost an impossibility.
F. J. Darch, London, Ont., is their national secretary.
Socialism in Canada is more generally represented by the
Canadian Socialist League, of which seventeen branches have
been formed in various parts of the Dominion, and which is now
establishing a fund for placing a paid organizer and lecturer in
the field and for publishing propaganda literature. A national
organization is also being perfected, this having been purposely
delayed until a score of leagues have been formed, when a refer-
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SOCIALISM IN CANADA 687
endutn vote could be taken. These leagues have always worked
in harmony with trades unions in recommending members to
join the union of their trade, if one exists. They are also for-
tunate in having the co-operation of the radical element of the
Canadian clergy, the churches in this country wielding a great
influence and being more in touch with the socialist movement
than in other countries. Until a national organization is per-
fected C. S. L. No. 2, Toronto, is acting as the central body,
the organizing secretary being G. Weston Wrigley, 293 King
West, Toronto.
Canadian Socialist Leagues have been formed in the follow-
ing places : Montreal, Que. ; Toronto, West Toronto, London,
Malton, Poplar, Mount Forest, Gait, St. Thomas, and Hamil-
ton, Paris, Ont.; Pt. Moody, Ferguson, Sapparton and Victoria,
B. C., and Tantallon and Banff, N. W. T. Leagues are being or-
ganized in many other places and unaffiliated socialist bodies
have been formed as follows : United Socialist Party, Vancou-
ver and Nanaimo, B. C. ; Socialist Educational Club, Nelson, B.
C. ; Peopled Union, Brantford, Ont., and Social Science Club,
Ottawa, Ont. Labor parties have also been formed in Winni-
peg, Man. ; Rossland, Nelson, Nanaimo and Vancouver, B. C,
but the body in the last-named place at a recent election fused
with one of the capitalistic parties. The future of the organized
movement looks very bright, and with the placing of a paid
organizer in the field by the C. S. L. a solidified movement
should be in existence within a year.
In 1897 two socialists were nominated for the Ontario legis-
lature in London, Ont., H. B. Ashplant polling 126 votes and
C. H. Gould 57 votes, the former representing the S. L. P. and
the latter the Co-operative Commonwealth. In 1900 the S. L.
P. nominated R. Rhoadhouse for the London seat in the Do-
minion Parliament and 214 votes were polled. In Vancouver,
B. C, the United Socialists nominated Will MacClain for the
Legislature in June, 1900, and he polled 684 votes, twenty-seven
of the twenty-'eight members elected polling a smaller vote.
In 1900, socialists aided labor candidates in several places, poll-
ing 3,441 votes for A. W. Puttee, M. P., in Winnipeg, Man. j
2,564 for Chris Foley in Rossland, B. C. ; 1,660 for Hugh Stev-
enson in West Toronto, and 179 for Dr. H. G. Hargrave in
Center Toronto, the latter being a straight socialist on a labor
ticket in a strongly partizan constituency.
In Toronto in 1899 S. L. P. candidates for aldermen in four
wards polled 706 votes. In 1900 five candidates polled 1,453,
and in 1901 the mayoralty candidate polled 221 votes. In Ham-
ilton two S. L. P. aldermanic candidates polled 283 and 342
votes in 1899 and 1900 respectively and in 1901 the vote was
441 for the whole city. In 1899 and 1900 tickets were nom-
inated by the S. L. P. in London, but only figures for the may-
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688 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
oralty candidate are at hand, being 656 and 2,402 respectively,
in the latter case the trades unions having endorsed the candi-
date, an alderman being elected by the joint vote. In 1901 R.
N. Price, St. Thomas, of Canadian Socialist League, No. 16,
was elected alderman in St. Thomas, his vote being 975 ; and in
Brantford, C. M. Durward was elected alderman on the social-
ist platform of the People's Union, the S. L. P. having polled
250 votes in that city in 1899. It is safe to say that socialist
candidates will be nominated more frequently in the future,
although restrictive legislation is already being drafted to curb
our progress in thif direction.
"Citizen and Country," published weekly at Toronto, is Can-
ada's leading exponent of socialism. It is edited by George
Wrigley, who has been a central figure in every radical move-
ment during the past twenty years. The paper was originally
a social reform journal, but is now recognized as the national
advocate of trades unionism and socialism. Several labor pa-
pers, "The Voice," Winnipeg, Man. ; "Industrial World," Ross-
land, B. C. ; "Independent," Vancouver, B. C. ; "Industrial Ban-
ner," London, and "The Toiler," Toronto, also devote consid-
erable space to socialistic questions, the labor movement
throughout Canada being very friendly to socialistic propa-
ganda. Many thousands of Bellamy's "Parable of the Water
Tank" have been circulated by the Canadian Socialist League
in all parts of the Dominion, and two lecture tours each by
Comrades Herbert N. Casson, Eugene V. Debs and George E.
Bigelow have also aided very materially in the propaganda
work.
Few persons have aided our movement more than Comrade
T. J. McBride, Melbourne, Australia, formerly of Toronto and
Winnipeg. Comrade Phillips Thompson is our pioneer writer
and lecturer and has been ably assisted by Comrade G. G. Pur-
dey, Dr. H. G. Hargrave and W. J. Clokey, Toronto. Amongst
the active pioneer workers throughout the Dominion the fol-
lowing comrades may be mentioned : A. F. Landry, Amherst,
N. S. ; C. McKay, Montreal, Que.; J. M. Macoun, Ottawa,
W. A. Ratcliffe, Port Hope, H. P. Bonny, Hamilton, J. D.
Mullholland, Brantford, T. A. Forman, Woodstock, R. N. Price,
St. Thomas, H. B. Ashplant, J. T. Marks and J. C. Spence,
London, Ont. ; J. T. Mortimer, Winnipeg, Man. ; W. R. Abbott,
Maple Creek, Assa; Thomas Farrar, Lethbridge, Alta, R. P.
Pettypiece, Ferguson, J. M. Cameron, Point Moody, and O.
Lee Charlton, Victoria, B. C.
Various co-operative enterprises have been launched and our
Canadian comrades have had their share of experiences in this
direction. Labor exchanges and co-operative stores have been
established in many places, but only in Lethbridge and Calgary,
Albt., and Rossland, B. C, are co-operative enterprises in ex-
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SOCIALISM IN CANADA 689
istence at present. In Brantford, Ont., a co-operative coal
company has met with success. The Itfamona Co-operative
Farm Colony at Tantallon, Assa, has survived several years'
existence, while the lumbering colony at Ruskin, B. C, dis-
banded a year ago.
From every standpoint the outlook for socialism in Canada
looks promising. As in other countries, business is centraliz-
ing rapidly and the iron heel of private monopoly is forcing
every class to study the industrial evolution. The Eastern
provinces have been the slowest to move; Ontario is rapidly
learning the socialist lesson and Western Canada is honey-
combed with our doctrines. With this outlook we have every
reason to send a message of encouragement to our comrades
throughout the world.
Toronto, April, 1901. G. Weston Wrigley.
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Trade Union Movement
HE growth of organized labor during the past year,
in point of new unions formed and members gained,
is very gratifying to those who are enlisted in the
cause ; and it appears from the evidence at hand that
in proportion as they organized, agitated, went on strike and
boycotted were the conditions of the workers improved. Ab-
stract theories, comprehensive philosophy and reasons without
number have been given to show why working people should
unite ; but I believe none are as eloquent and convincing as the
following plain facts and figures of what has been accomplished
which I have condensed from official reports :
Miners formed 498 new unions and gained 67,086 members
during the year. The increase of wages secured will approx-
imate $20,000,000 annually. The raise ranges from 10 to 20
per cent, and benefits workers in Alabama, Maryland, Penn-
sylvania, Tennessee, Kansas and Missouri, where strikes were
waged successfully, and in other states through joint confer-
ences. Minor concessions were also obtained.
Oil well workers gained 23 new unions and 531 members.
Increase of wages average 50 cents for twelve hours.
Brickmakers made net gain of 7 unions and 600 members.
Won three strikes, two pending and one lost. Secured eight-
hour day, recognition of the union, and 5 per cent more wages.
Potters made net gain of 8 unions and 957 members. Won
one strike, secured recognition of union, uniform scale and 15
per cent increase of wages.
Glass bottle blowers gained 200 members and 7 per cent
more wages. Work eight and one-half hours per day.
Bakers report net gain of 51 unions and 1,997 members.
Won three strikes, 10 per cent more wages, recognition of
union, and reduced labor time one hour.
Butchers made net gain of 38 unions, 2,900 members, 10 per
cent increase of wages and reduced working time two to four
hours.
Tobacco workers report net gain of 9 unions and 2,149 mem-
bers.
Cigarmakers report net gain of 2J unions and 6,717 mem-
bers. Won 92 strikes, compromised 10, lost 20. Over one-half
of persons engaged in strikes secured additional benefits, and
of the 12,153 strikers one-half were non-union.
Tailors show net increase of 44 unions and 3,000 members.
Won 21 strikes, compromised two and lost three, gaining in
wages $100,000 a year and $25,000 without strikes.
coo
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TRADE UNION MOVEMENT 691
Garment workers report net gain of 39 unions and 2,500
members. Hours of labor were reduced, wages advanced and
other matters adjusted in several places by arbitration.
Ladies' garment workers organized 9 new unions, won two
strikes and lost four, and state wages were raised 25 to 30 per
cent and 18 shops unionized.
Hatters won a strike and compromised one. Unionized two
factories and obtained higher wages.
Shoemakers report a net gain of 22 unions and 2,963 mem-
bers. Won three strikes, compromised one and lost one. Se-
cured better prices and conditions for many members.
Saddlers had net gain of 22 unions and 900 members. Won
10 strikes and lost one, wages advanced 40 per cent, and hours
of labor reduced.
Spinners organized 3 new unions and increased membership
by 616. Two strikes were won and 10 per cent wages gained.
Lace curtain operatives gained 10 new members and reduced
hours of labor and raised wages 15 per cent without strike.
Elastic web weavers held their own in organization and won
two strikes, benefiting all the members of the union.
Upholsterers had net gain of five unions and 207 members.
Won eight strikes, compromised four and lost two. Approxi-
mate gain of wages, 25 per cent. Also secured advantages
without strikes.
Granite cutters increased membership by 1,500. Enforced
the eight-hour day throughout the country, raised wages 16
2-3 per cent and secured general recognition of the organiza-
tion.
Painters report net gain of 154 unions and 13,000 members
(largely through amalgamation). Won 14 strikes, compromised
two and lost two. Raised wages and reduced hours of labor.
Lathers start national union with 59 locals, nearly all of
which got more pay and shorter hours.
Amalgamated carpenters secured 5 unions and 809 members.
Won 10 strikes, compromised one and lost one, gaining eight-
hour day, Saturday half-holiday and 2^/2 per cent increase in
wages.
Woodworkers had net increase of 51 unions and 5,400 mem-
bers. Won 16 strikes, lost two and three pending, the increase
of wages averaging 15 per cent. Enforced eight-hour day for
2,000 men in Chicago.
Wood carvers gained one union and 277 members. Won 10
strikes, lost two and compromised three, securing 10 per cent
raise in wages and reduction of working time average five hours
a week.
Coopers had net gain of 26 unions and 1,148 members. Won
15 strikes, compromised three, lost seven. Raised wages 20
per cent and cut hours in ten cities.
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69* INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
Trunkmakers gained 4 unions, 85 members and 5 per cent
wages.
Broom-makers made net gain of 11 unions and 350 members.
Six strikes won and raised wages 15 per cent.
Carriagemakers had net gain of 10 unions and 125 members.
Won four strikes, lost two and reduced working time one hour
a. day.
Horseshoers had net gain of 11 unions and 500 members.
Won four strikes, lost four and enforced nine-hour day.
Boilermakers report net gain of 44 unions and 2,212 mem-
bers. Won 49 strikes, compromised three and lost four; gain-
ing 5 to 10 per cent wages, shorter hours and better conditions
generally.
Iron molders had net gain of 72 unions. Won eight strikes,
compromised one, lost 15, eight pending. Increased wages.
Machinists had net gain of 91 unions and 13,000 mem-
bers. Won 24 strikes, compromised nine, lost §ve, enforced
shorter workday and raised wages.
Steamfitters gained 9 unions, compromised one strike and
lost two.
Patternmakers gained 5 unions and 306 members and better
wages. Won four strikes, lost two, compromised one.
Stovemounters gained 4 unions, 300 members and 5 per cent
in wages. Lost one strike, compromised one, won four.
Tinplate workers gained 2 unions, 300 members and shorter
workday.
Metal mechanics announce increase of 19 unions and 2,000
members net.
Metal polishers made net gain of 36 unions and 2,000 mem-
bers. Compromised two strikes, lost one, won 14, raised wages
and reduced working time.
Jewelry workers lost a strike, raised wages 10 per cent and
reduced hours.
Watch case engravers report 8 new unions and 100 members.
Won three strikes, 15 per cent more wages and abolished piece-
work.
Bookbinders gained 10 unions, 1,209 members, 20 per cent
wages and cut off an hour a day from working time. Won
three strikes and lost two.
Papermakers report net increase of 3 unions and 500 mem-
bers.
Printers had net gain of 67 unions and 1,500 members. Won
seven strikes, lost 11. Slight increase in wages.
Plate printers secured 25 new members and won a strike.
Musicians report net gain of 30 unions and 2,100 members.
Printing pressmen had net gain of 27 unions and 2,190 mem-
bers. Won 15 strikes and compromised five.
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TRADE UNION MOVEMENT 688
Theatre employes gained 7 unions and won three strikes.
Secured raise in wages 25 to 125 per cent.
Engineers made net gain of 19 unions and 1,272 unions.
Won five strikes, five pending, and increased wages.
Coal-hoisting engineers increased 19 unions, 400 members,
advanced wages, reduced hours and won a strike.
Firemen gained 37 unions, 2,100 members, raised wages, re-
duced hours. Won three strikes, compromised one, lost one.
Railway trackmen had net gain of 50 unions and 1,350 mem-
bers. Reduced working time on 10,000 miles of railway and
raised wages by $200,000 a year.
Street railway employes show net gain of 35 unions and 1,000
members. Won six strikes, lost three. Reduced hours and
raised wages in many cities.
Team drivers had net increase of 88 unions and 4,100 mem-
bers. Won 12 strikes, compromised two, lost three.
Longshoremen gained 79 unions and 6,000 members. In-
creased wages 10 per cent, reduced hours 5 per cent. Won
nine strikes, compromised two, lost one.
Retail clerks report net gain of 175 unions and 10,000 mem-
bers. Two strikes won, hours of labor reduced.
Barbers made net gain of 68 unions and 3,152 members.
Reduced labor hours generally and advanced wages.
Waiters and bartenders report net gain of 73 unions and
5,007 members. Won 14 strikes and bettered conditions.
While the foregoing summary proves that something has
been gained in the matter of shortening hours of labor and rais-
ing wages by and through organizing unions and meeting the
capitalist class with the strike and boycott, practically nothing
has been won through political effort. It is true that in the
various state capitals and at Washington committees have been
kept busy, at an enormous expense, in lobbying for legislation,
but their efforts have uniformly met with failure.
The legislative committee of the A. F. of L. reports that the
eight-hour law as it stands can be violated at will, and that
the amendment to make it operative was pigeon-holed in the
Senate. The prison labor bill met the same fate. All the power
and influence of the Federation was centered on these two
measures, but election was over when the "hold-up" session
met, and labor, having been used again by the politicians, re-
ceived its usual treatment.
In the states in which legislatures met the same complaints
are heard. In Massachusetts, although Representatives Carey
and MacCartney, Social Democrats, fought valiantly to secure
the enactment of laws to enforce the eight-hour day on govern-
ment work, to raise the age limit of child labor, to introduce
the referendum and similar concessions, the Republican and
Democratic brethren were too much for them. In New York
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694 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
most of the labor bills were turned down ; in Nebraska twelve
out of fourteen were defeated ; in North Carolina and Georgia
child labor and other bills were defeated ; in Montana, despite
the fact that Senator Clark promised to support certain labor
measures, his henchmen were against them when the test came ;
in Washington and other states the laboring people's demands
were also spurned.
In some instances, to quiet the clamors of trade union com-
mittees, bills are rushed through the hopper, their authors
and the leaders of the legislature understanding clearly that
they are loosely drawn or are unconstitutional ; but they serve
their purpose as electioneering baits, and after campaigns the
courts throw them out. During the past year many meritorious
laws — such as the measures compelling contractors on public
work to pay prevailing (or trade union) rates of wages, pro-
viding for eight-hour workday on municipal and state work,
to require that the printers' union label be placed on public
printing, giving mechanics a lien on work performed and sim-
ilar acts — have been declared unconstitutional in the various
states. It has come to be regarded as almost a foregone con-
clusion that whenever a test case is made of a labor law, so-
called, those most vitally interested, the working people, are
the ones who are disappointed when the decision is handed
down.
The one bright spot in the political horizon of labor is thq
growth of the socialist movement as expressed by the Social
Democratic party. This new force is composed largely of trade
unionists and thinking working people who can readily see that
the reason labor secures no favorable legislation is because it
would jeopardize the interests of the class in power, and that
no matter how persistently labor may plead for palliatives it
will be given nothing but the traditional stone to feed upon.
When Lincoln issued his famous call to the people for vol-
unteers to save the nation, 100,000 men responded. History is
repeating itself in a way, for a year ago the Rochester and In-
dianapolis socialist conventions also issued a call for volunteers
to save the working class from being plunged deeper into wage-
slavery, and once more 100,000 brave and honest souls respond-
ed with the glad refrain: "We are coming!"
Let the trade unionists who have struggled against hostile
legislators and courts and militia and police, who have waged
strikes and boycotts against fierce opposition, take heart and
new courage. An army of class-conscious men is marshaling
to gain final emancipation from all forms of slavery. As the
union is a class-conscious body that opposes the capitalist class
on the industrial field, let the members of the unions and their
friends and sympathizers become thoroughly consistent
and join the political movement of their class — the Social Dem-
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
TRADE UNION MOVEMENT 695
ocratic party — and march forward to the co-operative common-
wealth. That goal reached, labor will not need or desire the
palliative crumbs of politicians, but will receive the full pro-
duct of socialized effort — all the wealth it produces — and one
thing more, ECONOMIC FREEDOM!
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Socialism in the Middle West
ISSOURI, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa are four states
which best typify the growth of the socialist move-
ment in the Middle West. Some idea of the status
of this movement may be obtained from the following
comparison: In 1840, there were 7,059 votes cast throughout
the United States for James G~ Birney, candidate of the Liberty
party for president, and this was the political nucleus of the
movement which twenty years later resulted in the abolition of
slavery. In 1900, Missouri alone cast 7475 votes for socialism,
416 more than were cast in 1840 for Birney in the nation. Dur-
ing the past ten years Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa
have been the chess-board for great political moves in the final
struggles between the capitalist class interest represented by
the Republican party and the middle class interest represented
by the Democratic and People's parties. The result has been
the disappearance of one and the disintegration of the other
of the two last named, and what is most significant, the sweep-
ing away of much of the middle-class ideas of economics which
have confused the public mind. During the ten years' conflict
referred to the socialist movement has been slowly evolving in
these states, through what might properly be called a genera-
tive period, reaching its fruition in 1900, when it came forth
as a new-born political child with the proportions and strength
portending a giant. Apart from the political death-throes of
capitalism and its resultant suffering, there are influences which
have directly contributed to the growth of the socialist move-
ment in the Middle West that may be traced back as far as 1878.
In this year, as a result of the widespread excitement over the
great railroad strikes and Mollie Maguire trouble, there was
started in St. Louis a daily socialist paper, Volkstimme des Wes-
tern, which had quite a large circulation and came near bringing
about the election of a congressman on a socialist platform.
"St. Louis Tageblatt" was a daily German socialist paper
started in 1888 and continuing in circulation until 1897. In
1888 came Bellamy's "Looking Backward," producing a pro-
found impression, especially in Kansas, followed in 1890 by
the formation, mainly through the Kansas Farmers' Alliance,
of the People's party. The People's party, while not a social-
ist party, nevertheless carried on a propaganda with stump
and platform speakers, a numerous press and campaign pam-
phlets like "Ten Men of Money Island" and "Seven Financial
Conspiracies," which gave a great stimulus to the study of eco-
6M
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SOCIALISM IN THE MIDDLE WEST 697
nomics and indirectly made thousands of socialists among the
farmers and the working class generally in the Middle West.
In 1890 was also established the Labor Exchanges on De
Barnardi's plan, quite a number of which still exist in the Mid-
dle West, and on account of their co-operative methods have
had a socialistic influence. The year 1893 marks a milestone in
the socialist movement in the Middle West. In this year, with
the "panic" as an appropriate capitalist background, the pub-
lication of "Labor" was begun by the Socialist Newspaper
Union at St. Louis, and furnished simultaneously with separ-
ate local headlines to thirty-five cities, containing sections of
the Socialist Labor party.
Among these besides St. Louis were Lincoln, Neb., Omaha,
Neb., Kansas City, Mo., and Council Bluffs, la. The publica-
tion of "Labor" m 1893 a * so meant the Americanizing of the
movement in the Middle West. In this year Albert E. San-
derson, one of the managing publishers of "Labor," was nom-
inated as the first socialist candidate for mayor of St. Louis,
polling 1,631 votes. "Labor" continued in circulation until
April, 1897, when it was discontinued owing to local publishers'
complications and internal differences in the S. L. P. about pol-
icy. The Pullman strike of 1894, Coxey's Armv and the trial
and imprisonment of Debs contributed to fan the flame of
popular but unconscious resentment against the capitalist sys-
tem and gave increasing virility to the socialist movement.
In August 1895 the "Appeal to Reason" was established at
Girard, Kan., by J. A. Wayland, and it has been a powerful fac-
tor in making converts to socialism and nourishing the move-
ment in this section. "Coin's Financial School," published in
1895, with its sale of a million copies, principally in the Middle
West, had a far-reaching influence upon the development of
socialism. While not a socialist work, it presented the sup-
posedly dark science of economics in an attractive manner
never before achieved by any writer, causing thousands of its
readers to go the full gamut of political economy to the extent
of finally repudiating the very doctrines advocated by the book
and openly avowing socialism.
The People's party reached the climax of its strength in 1896,
when (excepting a small remnant) it was absorbed by the Dem-
ocratic party. In this year also, owing to unfortunate internal
dissensions, the vote of the Socialist Labor party in St. Louis
decreased to 596, as from 1,631 in 1893. The announcement
by Eugene V. Debs of his conversion to socialism in January
1897, the formation of the Social Democracy in June and the
holding of a Labor and Reform Conference at St. Louis in
August of that year, mark the period when the labor unions and
socialist organizations began to converge, giving a great im-
petus to the agitation for socialism in the trade unions. This
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
698 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST RbVi&VT
found an expression in the following year in the socialistic res-
olution adopted by the American Federation of Labor in an-
nual convention at Kansas City in December and which re-
vealed a surprising showing of socialist delegates to that body.
The influence of these events on the socialist movement of the
Middle West was undoubtedly important.
During 1898 the "Arbiter Zeitung," a weekly German social-
ist paper, was started in St. Louis. It is still in circulation and
is doing creditable work for the movement. In November
1898 the socialist vote in Missouri was 2,700, which' showed
gratifying evidence of the socialist propaganda among the trade
unions. In June 1900 the Social Democratic party convened at
St. Louis in the first socialist state convention ever held in Mis-
souri, with delegates present from St. Louis, Liberal, Kansas
City, Poplar Bluff, Union and Washington. They indorsed the
nomination of Debs and Harriman and also nominated a com-
plete state ticket, including Caleb Lipscomb, of Liberal, Mo.,
for governor. As Comrade Lipscomb had a few years previous
been the candidate of the socialists of Kansas for governor of
that state, he enjoys the distinction of running successively for
governor of two different states. National and state tickets
were also put in nomination in this year by the socialists in
Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska.
The ."middle of the road" People's party also had a ticket in
the field in each of these states excepting Kansas, and recent
developments show that the rank and file of this party are de-
termined to join the socialist forces. The fallowing table shows
the socialist vote and the "middle of the road" vote in the states
comprising the Middle West :
People's
8. D. P. 8. L. P. (Middle Road) Total
Missouri 6,181 1,294 4,214 11,719
Kansas 1,606 1,606
Nebraska 828 1,104 1,927
Iowa , 2,742 269 618 8,614
11,851 1,668 &961 18,865
8.L. P. 1,558
Straight Socialist Vote 12,904
In December 1900 the national committee of the People's
(middle road) party held a meeting at St. Louis to decide upon
the future course of their party, and as a result of these deliber-
ations they have submitted a referendum to their members, pro-
posing an indorsement (with reactionary qualifications) of the
"co-operative commonwealth." In the meantime quite a num-
ber of their party papers have openly espoused socialism and
socialist party action, while the rank and file are joining the
socialist branches throughout the Middle West and re-enforc-
ing the movement with new and capable workers. On Janu-
ary 1, 1901, the Social Democratic party of St. Louis began the
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SOCIALISM IN THE MIDDLE WEST 699
publication of "Missouri Socialist/' a weekly English paper.
In the recent municipal elections in Missouri the local organ-
izations of the party have published weekly papers during the
campaign at Kansas City (where the party owns a printing
plant), and at Sedalia, the issue at that point being known as
the "Liberator."
A year ago the number of American-born comrades in the
movement in St. Louis was almost insignificant. To-day, they
constitute a numerous and effective addition to the movement,
whose foundation was laid by the German element. During
the presidential campaign of 1900 the Social Democratic party
of St. Louis raised and expended $700 for literature, speakers,
public meetings, etc. Immediately following the campaign they
raised over $50 for the Massachusetts movement, and during
the recent municipal election they raised and disbursed a cam-
paign fund of nearly $200 besides the separate fund for the
maintenance of the English organ.
The Central Trades and Labor Union of St. Louis, consisting
of 200 delegates, representing 30,000 organized wage-earners,
has the reputation of being a socialist body. A fair-sized minor-
ity of these delegates are class-conscious socialists and if they
largely influence and at times control that body, it is because of
their pre-eminent ability and integrity and their disinterested
and recognized devotion to the labor movement. The socialist
movement in the Middle West to-day includes at least 1,000,000
unattached socialists, most of whom cling to the half-way and
"step-at-a-time" measures advocated by capitalist politicians
who endeavor to ride into office and emolument on the crest of
the socialist wave. On the other hand, there is a marked in-
crease in the number of socialists who demand action along
uncompromising party lines, this being due to suffering and im-
patience under capitalist development and growing lack of con-
fidence in middle-class political measures. In addition to this,
the conviction is now rapidly gaining ground among trade
unionists that while the trade unions are essential to maintain
and enlarge advantages gained on the industrial field, the cap-
italist system is inherent with economic error and injustice, the
conditions of which are constantly aggravating, and which can
only be rectified through political action.
Leon Greenbaum.
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A Latter-Day Brook Farm
WAY up in the Adirondacks, two thousand feet above
sea level and twenty miles from the nearest railway
station, lies "Summer Brook Farm," overlooking' a
panorama of Alpine grandeur. To the east is Mount
Hurricane, with undulating slopes and pine-clad ridges ; to the
west stretch away great valleys, beneath the shadow of moun-
tain ranges topped by "Marcy" and "White Face." "Summer
Brook" is made up of cottage and chalet built of picturesque
spruce logs, and the visitor, entering the vine-bedecked porch-
way of the cottage, finds himself in a room whose vast propor-
tions and rude rafters recall some baronial hall of mediaeval
times. The great open fireplace, facing the door, bears the in-
scription "Ad Majorem Gloriam Amicitiae." Above its mantel
is a portrait of William Morris, the poet-artist, and one of
Walter Crane's socialist designs, picturing the workers as they
march in triumphal procession bearing aloft banners dedicated
to "Liberty, equality, fraternity." There is a piano, and some
rustic tables and chairs, and on one side a stairway, covered
by clustering ferns, leads to the apartment above. Facing the
west and occupying almost the whole wall is an immense win-
dow, commanding a superb stretch of hill and dale as far as
the eye can reach.
"Summer Brook" was built some six years ago by its pres-
ent owner, Prestonia Mann, who has consecrated it in large
measure to the service of the socialist cause. Prestonia Mann,
a kinswoman of Horace Mann, came of abolitionist stock ; the
reformer's blood is in her veins. She inclines to Fabianism,
rather than Marxism, and was for some years the editor of "The
American Fabian." Early in her life she fell deeply under the
glamor of "Brook Farm," and she determined that she would
at least make an attempt to perpetuate, in concrete form, the
ideals that found expression in that fraternal group of high-
souled New England thinkers, whose community life during a
few short years, though it was proclaimed a failure by the pro-
saic, has yet kindled a beacon whose light has shone around
the world. An exact imitation of the earlier project was neither
possible nor desirable, for the founder of "Summer Brook"
has studied the evolution of society too well to believe that
great social changes can be achieved by isolated experiments.
But it was perfectly practicable to establish a summer com-
munity which should express a socialist's ideal of fellowship and
beauty, and this was the form that her experiment took.
TOO
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A LA TTER-DA Y BROOK FARM 7#1
As the summers come and go, there meet in this earthly par-
adise among the mountains groups of kindred spirits — men and
women whose lives are attuned to high ideals, whose efforts
are pledged to the betterment of society. They gather fresh
inspiration for the winter's work from mutual intercourse and
from communion with nature's beauty. Here in the twilight, as
the crimson glory of the sunset fades and the mist gathers on
the dim mountains, the "sisters" and "brothers" come together
in the great hall and discuss the serious problems of life, of
labor, of love. Some "brother" will give an informal lecture
on a subject that is nearest to his heart. Or some "sister" —
perhaps the hostess herself — will take her place at the piano,
and strains from the splendid operas of Wagner, or the sombre
sonatas of Beethoven, re-echo through the hall and drift out
over the valleys.
The community that gathers here from year to year has
always been an interesting one, and has included the names of
many well-known social reformers (mostly of Fabian thought),
including Henry Demarest Lloyd, the modern knight of chiv-
alry who entered the lists against bloated privilege and monop-
oly; Charlotte Perkins Stetson, poetess and socialist, pointing
the way to a nobler day for womanhood and all humanity;
Professor Frank Parsons, author of many books on the theory
and practice of collectivism ; W. D. P. Bliss, editor of the "En-
cyclopedia of Social Reform" ; John Martin, the Fabian lecturer
and writer. Two survivors of the "Brook Farm" community
have carried its old spirit into this later prototype. They are
Mrs. Macdaniel, the sister of the late Charles A. Dana, and
John Thomas Codman, author of "Brook Farm; Historical
and Personal Memories." There are many other interesting
types to be found here, including authors, artists and profes-
sors. There is the young and ardent Jewist socialist from the
East Side of New York, who lives amid scenes of factional
strife and wrangling, yet remains firm in the faith that his idea
of truth will triumph finally. His bible is Marx, and he talks
learnedly and understanding^ of industrial evolution, of "sur-
plus value," and the "class struggle." There is the young Eng-
lish Fabian, fresh from contact with a Sidney Webb or a Ber-
nard Shaw, and ablaze with his idealism. In the fall evenings
he will stretch himself beside the crackling logs in the fireplace
and read aloud by the hour together from "Sigurd the Vol-
sung" or the "Earthly Paradise." There is the young girl
whose heart has blossom »d k to the greatest of all loves — the
love for her kind. She is writing her first articles, preparing
her first lectures ; she longs to enter the arena of public life to
plead the cause of the poor and oppressed.
The whole atmosphere around "Summer Brook" is intellec-
tual and artistic. At the neighboring inn may be found men
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702 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
of letters and learning. On the adjoining farm is the summer
school of the late Professor Thomas Davidson, with its lecture
hall and cluster of cottages among the trees. Professor David-
son, who since his death has been acclaimed by the London
"Spectator" "one of the dozen most learned men on this planet/'
carried on his studies and wrote most of his books in this sum-
mer home. A strong individualist in his thought and teaching,
his settlement naturally presented a strong contrast to "Sum-
mer Brook," and there used to be frequent intellectual clashes
between his center of learning and the socialist group. On one
memorable occasion his mountain lecture hall was the scene of
a spirited debate between Prestonia Mann and the individualist
philosophers.
George Ripley said of the "Brook Farm" experiment that
his hope was "to insure a more natural union between intel-
lectual and manual labor than now exists; to combine the
thinker and the worker, as far as possible, in the same individ-
ual ; to guarantee the highest mental freedom, by providing all
with labor adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing to
them the fruits of their industry; to do away with the neces-
sity of menial services by opening the benefits of education and
the profits (fruits) of labor to all ; and thus to prepare a society
of liberal, intelligent and cultivated persons whose relations with
each other would permit a more wholesome and simple life than
can be led amidst the pressure of our competitive institutions."
The same words may be used to describe the deeper meaning
of this modern community in the Adirondacks. Co-operation,
fraternity, equality, are the underlying principles. One of the
rules of the settlement is that every member shall do at least
two hours' manual labor daily for the common good. "Sis-
ters" and "brothers" take their part cheerfully in the menial
and out-door work of the community, which becomes pleasure,
instead of drudgery, because it rests on many shoulders and is
achieved by associated labor. "Washing day" is a most cheer*
ful, not to say jolly, function, and is participated in by all. The
professor finds that his brain is sharpened, not dulled, by a
morning's work in the potato patch or the woodshed. The
rendering of Chopin and Liszt is not found to suffer from the
musician's useful labor in the kitchen or the hayfield. Every
night, at the evening meal, the "Labor Book" is passed around,
and each individual is called upon to inscribe conscientiously
therein the service he has performed during the day. Meals
are taken on a piazza overlooking the mountain panorama, and
in place of "grace before meat" the hostess is accustomed to
read a brief selection from some ethical teacher or inspiring
prophet of the new life, whether it be Bellamy (a special favor-
ite), Ruskin, or Morris.
Leading from the great hall of "Summer Brook" is a pas-
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A LA TTER-DA Y BROOK FARM 708
sage-way which is dedicated in a special sense to socialism.
Its walls are a mosaic of designs, portraits and printed matter.
Here we may see the portraits of Washington and Lincoln
side by side with those of Carlyle, Thoreau, Walter Crane,
George Ripley and Margaret Fuller. There are stirring mot-
toes and quotations from Ruskin, Emerson, Htfwells, Tolstoi,
Mazzini, Sir Thomas More, Plato, as well as great numbers
of clippings from socialistic papers and pamphlets. Two selec-
tions are worth quoting here, for they express so well the soul
of "Summer Brook" philosophy. The first is from Ruskin:
"It is only by labor that thought can be made healthy, only
by thought that labor can be made happy, and the two cannot
be separated with impunity." The second is from Morris:
"What I want to do is to put definitely before you a cause for
which to strive. That cause is the democracy of art, the en-
nobling of daily and common work, which will one day put
hope and pleasure in the place of fear and pain as the forces
which move men to labor and keep the world a-going."
Two marriages have been celebrated in this mountain haunt.
In 1896 a young Scotch barrister and socialist took his bride
here, and the union was solemnized in the great hall beside
the great window. The night was stormy; the thunder rum-
bled through the mountain fastnesses; the lightning flashed
over the valleys. It was like some splendid drama; it was the
very embodiment of the spirit of poetry and romance. Last
September the hostess herself was married beside the same
window, and she and her husband were escorted to the gate-
way through a fairy pageant of gay lanterns and sped on their
bridal journey.
"Summer Brook" is a place fit for kings, and its very atmos-
phere brings inspiration to the lover of beauty. To those who
are able to look back over pleasant days spent there, there is
a glamor like that of a dream which makes one feel that the
experience was unreal, so far is it removed from the sordid
city life to which so many of us are condemned. Its indescrib-
able beauty, its exquisite simplicity, its fraternal fellowship,
carry with them the fundamental principles which shall finally
find expression in the redeemed social life of the future.
On a knoll apart from the cottage is a sun-dial, and upon it
is hewn in rough characters the legend : "The shadows pass."
With what meaning are these simple words fraught ! Aye, as
one stands in that place, overwhelmed by the proportions of the
towering hills, dazzled by the loveliness of a scene such as man's
eye seldom rests upon, it is not hard to believe that the black
shadows of strife and injustice are passing, and that humanity
will step out at last into the sunlight of truth, of justice, of
peace.
New York, February, 1900. Leonard D. Abbott.
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704 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
RELEASE
There's a crash of anguish breaking,
There's a hush both deep and long,
There's an echoing cry of triumph
As they crush out shame and wrong.
Swirling, flinging through the darkness
Stretch a million gleaming hands ;
They are swift and sure in judgment, —
Hark ! they're breaking iron bands.
From the gulfs where blackness shudders
Cry on cry is ringing out —
Cries of hope long centuries sunken,
Deep within the depths of doubt.
'Twill take long, you say, to break them —
All these fetters — every chain ?
Know you then, we're growing stronger,
Strong in body, heart and brain,
Till with all our strength united,
In some future sun-lit day,
We will free each man in justice,
Till the last bond fall away.
There's no time to wait or question
"Is this best?" or "Is this right?"—
All is best which leads to freedom —
And all freedom ends in light.
And you'll know at last, O proud one,
That your brother standing there
Has more love and God-sent beauty
Than you ever thought to share.
Ah! you're dazzled by the j^lory
Since you thought a sordid life
Lav beneath the wreck and ruin
Of the centuries' blood and strife.
'Tis not so — tho' inner radiance,
First faint glimmering through the night
Flung itself upon the darkness —
Sprang to meet the outer light.
Freedom! freedom! freedom — silent,
With resistless mighty force
Is forever sweeping onward
From the one exhaustless source.
Rose Alice Cleveland.
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The Trade Union Movement in France
HE Annual of Trade Unions for 1900* just published
by the Labor Bureau of the Department of Com-
merce and Industry gives decisive figures for the
progress of the trade union movement in France. It
is certain that the development of labor unions is a character-
istic fact of social evolution in France in these last years. Not
only does the union become more and more the representative
organ of organized labor in the economic field, but it is also
recognized as such by the law. In order to account for this it
suffices to review the road traveled by us, without considering
as yet the "Annual" for 1900.
From the legal point of view the progress is immense. The
Chapelier law of June 17, 1791, absolutely forbade the forma-
tion of trade unions : "The abolition of all kinds of corpora-
tions composed of citizens of the same calling or profession
being one of the fundamental principles of the French Consti-
tution, it is forbidden to revive them under any pretext or form
whatever/'
This suppression of guilds by the French revolution had a
double cause. First, historical; the abuses engendered by the
egoism of the masters and the unscrupulous trafficking in priv-
ileges on the part of the royal power. Second, an economic
cause; industrial development was breaking through the nar-
row confines of ancient rules, for it needed absolute freedom
for its unlimited expansion, and the new economic regime was
still too little defined to make the least attempt at organiza-
tion possible.
But this absolute prohibition to organize professionally ap-
plied in reality only to the laborers. As a matter of fact, the
masters continued to unite, so that in 1848 the "Group of
Sainte-Chappelle ,, in Paris comprised eleven local employers'
unions. And in 1857 the "National Commercial and Industrial
Union" was founded, a famous and powerful organization of
manufacturers and merchants.
On the other hand, the strictest measures were adopted
against laborers till i860. Legislation was harshly unjust
against them ; while lenient for employers, it was oppressive for
laborers. The persecutions by the police and the judges were
unremitting for all laborers who snowed the least inclination
to form groups. Under Louis Philippe, public opinion was
agitated by great strikes and attention called to the legal con-
* L'Aunualre des Syndicate Professionels pour 1900.
706
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
706 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
dition of the laboring class. The revolution of 1848 brought
the right of suffrage, but not the right of association. Dur-
ing the first half of the second empire, from 1851 to i860, new
strikes occurred; the "Liberal Empire" made its first step in
the direction of liberty. The law of May 25, 1864, established
the freedom of coalition, but it denied the right to meet and
associate. The first stage was nevertheless passed. Temporary
coalition must of necessity produce permanent coalition sooner
or later.
In order to fight the industrial bourgeoisie that became trou-
blesome the Liberal Empire began to favor the laborers. Since
1848, the latter had become a growing political power, and it
was wiser to manage them diplomatically than to persecute
them. The vigorous economic development, furthermore,
filled the laboring class with a new vitality and intensified its
desire of association. In short, the central power showed itself
tolerant, and we may say that from this moment dates the
trade union movement in France.
The development of labor unions under the Liberal Empire
was facilitated, apart from the political and economic causes
just mentioned, by other equally important factors. In the
first place, the old system of "compagnonnage" (companion-
ship) was far from being extinct and furnished to the unions
the first framework for their organization. The mutual ben-
efit societies that had been formed in great numbers during the
century also became the first embryos of unions. But above
all the labor delegations to the international expositions of
London in 1862 and of Paris in 1867 gave the strongest im-
pulse to the labor movement. The laborers who had come to
London and Paris felt more strongly than ever the necessity of
forming trade unions, and the result of their meetings was the
creation of numerous trade associations. And lastly, the for-
mation of the "International Workingmen's Association" in
London, 1864, was a further factor stimulating the growth of
the labor movement. Especially the Paris section of the Inter-
national was singularly effective in the formation of labor
unions. As a result sixty-seven unions were running smoothly
in the beginning of 1870, when the empire began to totter,
when the Franco-German war was threatening and the Com-
mune in Paris impending.
The events of 1870-71 led to the dissolution of all labor asso-
ciations. The suppression of the Paris Commune naturally
did not encourage their revival. The laborers viewed the cen-
tral power with pronounced distrust, and the active and ener-
getic militant members had disappeared into a forced or volun-
tary exile. However, during 1872-73, when business began
to revive, the trade union movement again made its first timid
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
TRADE UNION MOVEMENT IN FRANCE 707
appearance. The labor delegations to the exposition of Lyons
in 1872, of Vienna in 1873 and of Philadelphia in 1876, greatly
encouraged this awakening. Public opinion was strongly af-
fected by the reports which these delegations published. Em-
ployers, unattached laborers and politicians daily recognized
more and more the growing influence of trade unions. In 1876
the first labor congress was held in Paris ; another took place
at Lyons in 1878 ; a third at Marseilles in 1879, and many others
followed during the next years. Unions appeared in great
numbers without interference. The law o£ March 21, 1884,
sanctioned this new state of affairs and brought the freedom of
professional association to the world of labor : "The unions or
professional associations, even of more than twenty members
of the same calling, of similar trades or of related vocations. .
may be freely constituted without the authorization of the
government." (Art. 2.)
Thus, after long and painful struggles, the laborers were al-
lowed to unite on* the field of their economic interests. Still,
at first, the trade union movement did not develop as rapidly
as might have been expected. The working class, long perse-
cuted by the central power, mistrusted the law and refused to
take advantage of it. Moreover, no habit of association had
been acquired, and where the laborers did not openly oppose
the law, they manifested indifference toward it. Besides, the
slow industrial development of France was not favorable to or-
ganization of the proletariat and it could not be torn by force
from its hostility or indifference. And finally, political dissen-
sions divided the laborers against one another. The socialist
factions (Guesdists, Blanquists, Broussists, Allemanists, etc.)
carried their rivalries and fights into the unions and completely
paralyzed the usefulness of the latter. In consequence, the de-
velopment of the trade union movement was extremely slow
from 1884 to 1890-92.
But from 1892 to 1900 the growth of this movement has been
very rapid. By degrees the laborers adjusted themselves to
the law of 1884 and accepted its rules. The habit of associa-
tion evolved gradually. The industrial development of the last
years exerted its wholesome influence on the labor movement.
And finally the latter separated from the political movement
and developed independently.
The years 1899 and 1900 were especially marked for the
great advance of the trade unions. Industrial prosperity was
general and business made itself strongly felt everywhere. The
preparations for the Universal Exposition gave a still more
vital impulse to the economic development in France. Great
strikes broke out in all parts of the land, as the laborers de-
manded their share of the general prosperity in the form of
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708
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
increased wages. Numerous unions were formed after these
strikes. To this economic was added a political reason : The
presence of a socialist minister in the cabinet, M. Millerand,
strongly encouraged the creation of trade unions. The whole
series of legislative measures which he introduced assisted this
tendency still more.
The most significant of these measures from the standpoint
of the trade unions is the law of September 17, 1900, decreeing
the formation of Labor Councils. Article 5 declares: "As
electors shall act in every section the legally constituted
trade unions." This practically forces the trade unions on the
laborers, makes them indispensable to those who wish to par-
ticipate in the management of Labor Councils. It is the first
step toward the obligatory union.
Such is the historical and legal evolution of the French trade
union movement ; prohibited at first, then permitted, the union
gradually tends to become obligatory.
The "Annual of Trade Unions for 1900" marks in the first
place the stages from 1884 to December 31, 1899. The devel-
opment is growing:
1884 68 unions.
1885.
1886.
1887.
1888.
1889.
1890.
1891.
1892.
1893.
1894.
1895.
1896.
1897.
1898.
1899.
. 221
. 280
. 501
• 725
. 821
.1,006
.1,250
.1,589
.1,928
.2,178
.2,163
.2,243
.2,324
.2,361
.2,685
The progress in the number of trade union members is
equally constant:
1890 139,692 members.
1891 205,152
1892 288,770
1893 402,125
1894 403,440
1895 4i9,78i
1896 422,777
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TRADE UNION MOVEMENT IN FRANCE 709
1897 437793 members.
1898 419761
1899 492,647
On the 31st of December, 1899, then, we had in France 2,685
unions, with a total membership of 492,647, equal to one-eighth
of the laboring class which numbers about four millions of
workers.
In comparing the trade union movement to that of the em-
ployers, we find that on December 31, 1899, there were 2,157
employers' unions with 158,300 members.
We have pointed out the progress of trade unions during the
last years, especially in 1899, and indicated the causes. A sim-
ple comparison of the figures brings out this pronounced suc-
cess still more clearly: while in 1898 the number of trade
unions had only increased by thirty-seven, the increase in 1899
was 324; while in 1898 the number of members showed a loss of
18,032, there was a gain of 78,886 in 1899.
"Mixed" unions, comprising employers and laborers, are few
in number. There were 175 in 1898 with 34,236 members; in
1899 only 170 were left with 28,519 members.
The "Annual" indicates the number of trade unions and their
membership, arranged according to provincial departments.
If, figures in hand, we try to determine which department has
the most unions and members, we arrive at the following re-
sults :
The departments having the greatest number of unions are :
Seine, 494; Rhone, 157; Mouth of Rhone, 129; North, 109;
Gironde, 92 ; Loire, 86 ; Lower Loire, 75 ; Naine and Loire, 66 ;
Herault, 63 ; Allier, 61 ; Lower Seine, 60, etc.
The greatest number of union laborers are in the following
departments: Seine, 196,150; Pas de Calais, 39,743; North,
31,377; Saone and Loire, 26,287; Loire, 17,538; Rhone, 17,333;
Mouth of Rhone, 13,610; Gironde, 11,583; Lower Seine, 8,605;
Allier, 6,531, etc.
We can likewise consider the distribution of unions and
union laborers by trades. The grouping of the trades under
investigation is the same as that adopted in the Trades' Cen-
sus of 1896.
The following trades comprise the greatest number of
unions: The wood industry, 311 unions with 21,469 members;
earth and stone construction, 253 unions with 20,429 members ;
iron, steel and metal industry, 226 unions with 23,510 mem-
bers; publishing industry, 173 unions with 12,754 members;
leather and hide industry, 166 unions with 18,792 members;
textile industry proper, 161 unions with 33,970 members ; pro-
miscuous trades, 160 unions with 34,302 members; clothing
industry, 126 unions with 8,801 members; stone cutting and
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710 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
polishing, 95 unions with 7,728 members; metallurgy, 82
unions with 14,015 members, etc.
The following trades employ the greatest number of union
laborers : Transportation, 93490 members ; mining industries,
40,796; various branches of commerce, 34,302; textile indus-
tries, 33,970; iron, steel and metal industries, 23,510; wood
industries, 21,469; earth and stone construction, 20,429; leather
and hide industries, 18,792; state and communal industries,
14,235; clothing industry, 8,801, etc.
A new feature of the "Annual" for 1900 is the appearance for
the first time of statistics concerning female union laborers.
These statistics are, however, very incomplete, for they give
only rather general figures. We simply learn that 30,975 out of
42,984 union women are laborers.
These statistics are also arranged by departments. We find
that the following departments comprise over 1,000 union wo-
men: Seine, 10,940; Mouth of Rhone, 1,695; North, 1,601;
Saone and Loire, 1,495; Lower Seine, 1,221; Isere, 1,209;
Indre, 1,197.
There are two categories of union women, not mentioned,
by the way, in the "Annual." One of them includes women be-
longing to the same union as the men of their trade; these
unions are also "mixed," comprising men and women. The
other category includes solely women's unions for the reason
that a certain trade employs only women or that the women or-
ganize separately.
The greatest number of union women are in the tobacco and
match industries and among the house servants. In the tobac-
co industry there are about twenty-seven unions composed
wholly or in part of women ; in the match industry, six unions.
The house servants in Paris have two unions, one containing
3>930, the other 1,001 members.
Next on the list of trades employing union women are : The
plume and artificial flower industry, public instruction, stenog-
raphy, typesetting, seamstresses, laundry business, massage,
cashier business, etc.
The lack of development in the female labor movement is
easily explained. The economic condition of women is in-
ferior to that of men, their wages are low and they have no
power of cohesion. They will rather compete with men than
to combine with them for the purpose of obtaining higher
wages for equal work. Moreover, many women work at home
and all association is forbidden to them. Finally and psycho-
logically, the female laborer is not yet fully conscious of her
rights and of the necessity of self-defense.
The "Annual" for 1900 furthermore gives statistics of the
federations of unions and of the labor exchanges (bourses de
travail) on December 31, 1899.
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TRADE UNION MOVEMENT IN FRANCE p 711
The statistics of the federations of unions are not clear. The
figure of seventy-three unions comprising 1,199 federated
unions makes no distinction between local, provincial and na-
tional unions, nor between trade and industrial unions.
There are few local or provincial unions of diverse trades.
The labor exchanges assume their functions. There is only one
great national federation of unions and amalgamated unions
of different trades : The "Confederation Generale du Travail"
(General Federation of Labor), founded in 1895 at Limoges.
There was formerly a "Federation Nationale des Syndicats
Ouvriers de France" (National Federation of French Labor
Unions), founded in 1886 at the labor congress of Lyons ; but it
was killed by the rivalries of the socialist factions.
The labor exchanges are at high tide of growth. In 1898
there were 55 of them comprising 1,136 unions with 159,284
members; in 1899, we find 65, with 1,350 unions and 239,449
members. In the single year 1899, then, we had an increase
of 10 nefw labor exchanges with 214 unions and 80,165 mem-
bers.
The labor exchanges are centralized under a "Federation des
Bourses du Travail de France et des Colonies" (Federation of
Labor Exchanges in France and the Colonies), which is the
next in size to the "General Federation of Labor"; it com-
prises 43 labor exchanges representing 747 unions. ,
As for federations of trade or industrial unions collecting
under one central body all trades employed in the production
of a certain article, they are few in number. We find only
about 41 of them, while 250 trades are unionized. National
federations of trades are very scarce; the most important of
them are the Federation of Millers, the Federation of Hat-
makers, the Federation of Mechanics, etc. National federa-
tions of industries are more frequent ; we mention the Federa-
tion of Building Corporations, the Federation of Workers in
the Publishing Business, the Federation of Metal Workers, the
National Union of Railroad Employes, the Federation of
Miners, etc.
It is very difficult for official statistics to summarize the
activity of trade unions and its results. The "Annual" cannot
tell us how much the level of wages was raised or how much
the industrial profit fell under the pressure of the activity of
trade unions. 'It is also unable to ascertain to what degree
the regulation of the labor market has been effected. Nor can
it indicate the influence of trade unions on the process of pro-
duction — development of technique, regulation of production,
etc. These effects of trade unions can only be ascertained by
monograph and special investigation. For this purpose the
"Office du Travail" (Department of Labor) is engaged in pub-
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712 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
lishing a voluminous work on the "Associations Profession-
dies Ouviers" (Professional Labor Associations), the second
volume of which is just out.
The "Annual" gives, however, an exact account of institu-
tions -established in 1899 by labor unions. Six hundred and
fifty-three unions founded employment bureaus; 598 of them
have professional libraries; 298 have funds for mutual assist-
ance ; 108 have funds for assistance in case of sympathetic and
other strikes, etc. ; 370 have funds for the assistance of unem-
ployed; 396 have organized traveling funds; 274 have profes-
sional courses, schools and conferences ; 42 have funds for the
assistance of disabled workers; 10 have professional meetings
and labor expositions, and 49 publish bulletins, journals or
annuals.
If we occupy an absolutely objective standpoint, it is evident
that neither the number of labor unions nor the number of
their members, nor the results realized by them, are in any
way exceptional. In order to judge correctly the labor union
movement in France, we must take up a wholly relative posi-
tion and consider the obstacles that had to be overcome as well
as the unfavorable soil in which it had to develop.
The trade unions are now well under way in France. The
public power safeguards their free development, and a law was
introduced by the government bestowing on them a legal char-
acter. We must conclude that the working class will avail itself
of all the facilities now offered for association and that the
French proletariat will again occupy the prominent place in
the history of organization that many other labor movements
have gained over us.
Hubert Lagardelle,
Paris, April 10, 1901. Editor of 4 'Le Mouvement Socialists "
(Translated by E. Untermann.)
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Socialist Propaganda Among Women in
Germany
HE first efforts to form organizations of female labor-
ers in Germany did not emanate from socialists.
Neither were the first groups of this kind composed
entirely of women of the laboring class. The initiative
for their formation was taken by women of the bourgeoisie who
were engaged in work for the emancipation of women. Per-
sons of both sexes belonging to the middle class were admitted
into those clubs as honorary members. Elevation of the intel-
lectual level of laboring women was their main object. Thus
the first club of this kind, founded in 1869 by Mrs. Otto Peters,
in Berlin, called itself "Society for further education and intel-
lectual stimulation of women of the laboring class" (Verein
zur Fortbildung und geistigen Anregung der Arbeiterfrauen).
The majority of these clubs soon disappeared from lack of
attendance. They were shunned by women of the laboring
class for pretending to better the condition of the latter with-
out taking notice of their material wants, or rather because
no better plan for the improvement of their material condition
was offered than culture of the brain and amelioration of the
heart.
New societies of laboring women arose out of the co-opera-
tion of women of the laboring class and the bourgeoisie, at-
tempting to cater at the same time to the material and moral
interests of their members. The management of these socie-
ties soon passed out of the hands of bourgeois women into
those of laboring women. In these societies and in others that
were founded and directed by laboring women, economic ques-
tions took the foremost place. The same evolution that brought
the management of the labor movement of women into the hands
of women of the laboring class directed this formerly purely
intellectual movement into the economic fight for higher wages
and better conditions of life and labor.
The women of the laboring class separated from the bour-
geois women and followed their own independent course. In
1896 they refused to take part in the International Congress of
Women in Berlin that had been called by women of the bour-
geoisie.
In the same measure in which the movement of female labor-
ers emancipated itself from the influence of the bourgeois wo-
men, it approached the movement of the male workers, the
socialist movement. And the police who endeavored to ob-
718
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714 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
struct the working-class movement by incessant persecutions,
while giving free scope to the bourgeois women, contributed to
the best of their ability to this tendency. From these causes
the movement of ,the women workers to-day has become an
integral part of the socialist movement, within the limits and
forms permitted by law. Militant female workers of Germany
took part in 1889 in the International Socialist Congress of
Paris, where, at their suggestion, the women's question became
the subject of special discussions. At their request the ur-
fency of an active propaganda among women was emphasized,
ince then laboring women have been represented by delegates
of their sex in all international socialist congresses and in all
the congresses of the German Social Democratic Party.
Socialist propaganda among women must essentially remain
in touch with the movement of working women, for this move-
ment fulfills the highest demands of such a propaganda.
We do not pretend that laboring women are the only wo-
men among whom the German socialists wish to carry on their
propaganda. They address themselves to all women, because
they hold that the women of all classes would become social-
ists if they recognized the true interests of their sex. "In the
family," said Engels, "man is the bourgeois and woman repre-
sents the proletariat." From this point of view the socialist
party is a women's party, as it is the party of all proletarians.
Socialist propaganda embraces all the women of all classes.
It would be necessary to analyze Bebel's book, "Woman in
the Past, Present and Future" chapter by chapter in order to
show what this propaganda signifies in its full meaning; in
order to show that the "Woman's Problem" in all its different
aspects finds its solution in socialism. Suffice it to repeat here
the fundamental truth that the dependence and slavery of wo-
men have their roots in the economic dependence on men, and
that this dependence and slavery will not cease until the eco-
nomic dependence will be abolished. At the time of primitive
communism, woman was independent and her own mistress.
Individual appropriation of the land and establishment of the
regime of private property marked the beginning of woman's
servitude. This state of things was sanctioned by Jewish, Chris-
tian and Mohammedan law. It was established under different
forms among the Greeks and Romans, in the middle ages as in
our day. An indissoluble tie links the servitude of women to
the system of private property. The efforts of women of the
higher classes to emancipate themselves within the plane of the
present economic system are doomed to certain failure. A
few superficial reforms may give them a temporary illusion of
victory, but the roots of woman's social slavery reach down
deep into the system of private property, and only by sapping
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SOCIALIST WOMEN IN GERMANY 715
the base of this system can the evil be eradicated and the slav-
ery ended. Socialism alone, by abolishing social classes, will
abolish the class character of the sexes, will permit the free
unfolding of woman's faculties and, through this freedom,
make her the equal of man.
Independently of theoretical arguments of this order that
have become classic among German socialists since the publica-
tion of Bebers book, the propagandists in their arguments can
bring different facts to bear on women. In the first place, the
socialists alone have embodied in their programs of immediate
measures the demand for the political and social equality of
women. Besides, the socialist representatives in the parlia-
ment have always, and very often alone against all the other
parties, defended the movement of women for emancipation and
even such endeavors as are only in the interest of women of
higher classes. Finally, within the party itself, women enjoy
complete equality with men, for they are chosen as delegates,
members of commissions and members of the executive com-
mittee of the party. Under Social Democracy the female citi-
zen has the same rights as the male citizen. Therefore the So-
cial Democracy of to-day offers the surest pledges of woman's
position in the social republic of the future.
Although the socialist party appeals to all the women, it is
no less true that it directs its principal efforts to the enlighten-
ment and organization of laboring women. Socialists are well
aware that strong ties bind women to their particular class.
They are well aware that the women of the middle and higher
classes, however strong the reason that should make them so-
cialists, will in the majority of cases be prevented by class pre-
judice from understanding the evidence before them. The wo-
men of the laboring class, on the contrary, are by birth and en-
vironment predisposed to understand and feel the truths of so-
cialist arguments.
The main object of socialist propaganda among women is to
point out to them that their proper place in this fight is not
by the side of bourgeois "woman movement" but of the social-
ist laborers. Women must comprehend that the women of the
bourgeoisie fight for equality with the men of their own class
only. But when the general interest of that class comes into
question, then they instinctively join the men of their class in
defence of their common class interests. The emancipated
bourgeois women make common cause with their bourgeois
opponents whenever the interests of the bourgeoisie come into
conflict with those of the proletariat. The bourgeois adherents
of emancipation are unable to understand that the enfranchise-
ment of women is impossible in the bourgeois society ; that the
Interests of their sex conflict with their class interests, and that
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71« INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
their sex interests are identical with those of the proletariat.
Only the victory of the latter will make women the equals of
men. The bourgeois friends of emancipation are bourgeois be-
fore they are in favor of emancipation. They respect the bour-
geois order of society so deeply that it never occurred to them
to protest against any of the frequent suppressions of laboring
women's societies or meetings. The bourgeois female suffrag-
ist is in favor of the bourgeois system at the expense of the
proletarian women. The latter would violate their duty if they
were to make common cause with the bourgeois.
They must make common cause with the socialist laborers.
While the interests of bourgeois women are opposed to those
of the men of their own class, the men and the women of the
proletariat have common interests. As far as wages are con-
cerned, the female laborer, like her male fellow-worker, can
only be released from the capitalist yoke by socialism. Fur-
thermore, as stated before, socialism alone will free the female
laborers as women. And finally, while waiting for the hour
of female and proletarian freedom, the true interests of male
and female laborers under capitalism are the same.
Too often conflicts arise between them, when female labor-
ers, in competition with men, take the places of the latter for
lower wages. Too often laboring men demand measures for-
bidding women to take the bread out of the men's mouths and
lower the price of manual labor. Sometimes, even laws are
demanded prohibiting all industrial employment for women,
just as men formerly would destroy the machines that threw
them out of work. These men do not understand that indus-
trial evolution cannot be arrested by arbitrary acts of violence.
Such acts always betray ignorance of economic laws. The atti-
tude of enlightened laborers has always been different. They
did not smash the machines ; for they understood that the ma-
chines would cease to deprive them of employment if the hours
of labor were reduced in the same measure in which labor,
thanks to machinery, became more productive. And they or-
ganized for the purpose of reducing the hours of labor. Like-
wise, seeing that female employment is a necessity arising out
of the present system of production, they simply demand that
women's wages shall be lower than men's only when their labor
is less productive. They ask that women's wages be raised.
These intelligent laborers furthermore invite women to unite
with them for the purpose of obtaining a raise in wages and a
general reduction of working hours, in order that every la-
borer, male and female, may obtain work. The trade union
men will help women to obtain higher wages and shorter hours.
And laboring women will always find advice, help and protec-
tion in the unions. The unions, while protecting the material
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SOCIALIST WOMEN IN GERMANY 717
interests of the laboring women, will at the same time give
them instruction and that strong training of character which is
the result of fighting for a common purpose. What bourgeois
women's clubs will never be able to give laboring women, the
union does offer. Self-interest, class interest and sex interest
demand that laboring women should join trade unions. Labor-
ing women must become members of trade unions and social-
ists.
Thus propaganda leads us to emphasize organization as the
essential factor. Under the present state of German legisla-
tion trade unions are the most effective and often the only pos-
sible form of organization for women. In several of the most
important states of the empire women are not allowed to be-
come members of political parties. As soon as the police de-
cides that a certain women's club or a club admitting women as
members is political, its dissolution is decreed. It is, therefore,
out of the question to organize women politically. What is to
be done ? They must be organized in non-political bodies that
will give them, in the absence of other advantages, at least a
certain cohesion.
This cohesion is obtained in societies of different character.
One of these, the "Kranken und Sterbe Kassen" (Sick and
Death Funds) were for a time the principal rallying centers.
The organization published a paper, "Die Staatsburgerin" (The
Female Citizen). This paper was confiscated. Societies for the
Education of Women (Frauen Bildungs Vereine) took its place
and serve the same purpose to this day ; but their existence is
very precarious, for they are at the mercy of police commis-
sioners. When the laws of exception against socialists were
abolished in 1890, the majority of trade unions changed their
constitutions in such a manner that women could become mem-
bers. Inside of these unions all efforts were directed to the
education of women. Apart from their economic function, the
trade unions serve as centers of organization for socialist wo-
men, as a means of education for those who are not yet social-
ists and who only join these unions because they find in them
protection of their material interests. The union itself does
not meddle with politics, but the organ of the union, which is
delivered to all members, may discuss politics. In social meet-
ings of the union politics must not be discussed, but the union
may hold public meetings in which male and female members
may take part in the discussion of political questions. And
as members of trade unions women live in a socialistic atmos-
phere, and if they are not yet socialists they have numerous
chances of becoming so.
How shall the propaganda among unorganized women be car-
ried on? How should direct socialist propaganda be managed?
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718 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
After the Paris Congress of 1889, commissions were formed
for the propaganda among women. But these were suppressed
in 1895 as political bodies. Thereupon a system of trustees
(Vertrauens Leute) was created. These trustees were elected
at public meetings and charged with all questions relating to
the propaganda among women. This system is in force
at the present time. Women trustees call propaganda
meetings, arrange for the distribution of pamphlets and
leaflets, and organize the propaganda among women of their
own town or district. A trustee for all Germany serves
as mediator for them and lends unity to their efforts. Their
principal assistants are female speakers, who address the prop-
aganda meetings, and the women authors of pamphlets and
leaflets for propaganda purposes. Nearly all of these trus-
tees, speakers and authors are laboring women or wives of
workingmen. The trade unions also employ mostly women for
propaganda work among female laborers. Independently of
the influence exerted on them by the trustees, the women en-
gaged in propaganda work keep in touch through a weekly
"Die Gleichheit" (Equality), an "organ for the protection of
the rights of laboring women."
Officially, the propaganda among women is resting solely on
the female trustees and the press organ. Officially, no socialist
organization of women exists. But behind these trustees,
bound by no other tie but confidence, are other devoted women
who remain in obscurity. And on arriving in any town, these
women find, in the absence of an organization, a spirit of har-
mony and good will that makes up for the lack of organiza-
tion . In places where no political organization of women
exists, the women comrades have joined non-political organi-
zations, educational clubs and unions. And even then such or-
ganizations become, without violating the law, the centers of
propaganda for socialist elements, by pure force of intercourse.
Thus the work of propaganda and organization goes on in spite
of the law and in the face of the most powerful antagonism, by
the sole agency of conviction and will.
Edgard Milhaud,
In ' % Le Mouvement Socialist. "
(Translated by E. Untermann.)
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A Letter From Japan
[The following letter, although not intended for publication, contains so much inter
esting news that we give it to our readers.— Editor.]
Unitarian Association, Shiba, Tokyo, Japan,
Mr. A. M. Simons: March 2, 1901.
Dear Comrade — Your two kind letters, one dated December
13 and the other January 28, reached me duly, and two copies
of your magazine with the first one. I must thank you indeed
for them all. To my great regret, however, I am hardly able
to comply with your request just for the present. The fact is
that when I received your first letter I set to work at once and
wrote an article on the prospect of socialism, but was obliged
to leave it unfinished owing to some pressing matters that I
had to attend to. I hoped then I could soon manage to com-
plete the article and send it to you, but by bad luck I was taken
ill and have still been feeling unwell. The trouble with me
seems to be a sort of nervous prostration, and yet I believe I
shall get over it before long, when I shall gladly finish up the
article and send it off. But I feel deeply sorry that you will not
get it so soon as you wish, that is before the middle of the
present month. You shall, however, have my essay sooner or
later.
It so happens that this very day we are going to hold the
first public meeting of our socialist association. We are pray-
ing for its grand success, though there is no doubt about it.
The interest of our people on socialism has been greatly awak-
ened these days, especially among our laboring people on one
hand and young students' circle oil the other, as much as we
can draw an earnest and enthusiastic audience and fill our hall
that holds two thousand. You may be interested to hear some-
thing about the speakers of this evening. I was one of the
speakers, but my present condition of health does not allow
me to take part in the meeting. What a pity I It is gratifying
to say that we have a number of fine and well-trained public
orators among our leaders of socialism in Japan. The first
speaker to-night is Mr. Kiyoshi Kawakami, editor of one of
our city dailies, a strong, independent and decidedly socialistic
paper, circulated far and wide. Mr. Kawakami is a scholar as
well as a popular writer. He is going to speak to-night on the
subject, "The Essence of Sodalism — the Fundamental Princi-
719
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720 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE Vlk W
pies." The next speaker is Professor Iso Abe, president of our
association, whose subject of address is "Socialism and the
Existing Social System." The third speaker is Mr. Naoe Kin-
osita, the editor of another strong journal of the city. He
speaks on the subject, "How to Realize the Socialistic Ideals
and Plans." Next is Mr. Shigeyoshi Sugiyama, a graduate of
Hartford Theological Seminary and an advocate of Social
Christianity, who is to speak on "Socialism and Municipal Prob-
lems." And the last speaker is the editor of the "Labor World"
and foremost leader of the labor union movement in our coun-
try, Mr. Sen Katayama, who speaks on the subject, "The Out-
look of Socialism in Europe and in America." These addresses
are going to be published in book form afterwards and to be
distributed among our people to enlighten their minds on the
subject. I shall perhaps write you again further about the
meeting after I attend it to-night.
Your International Socialist Review is a grand thing, and
that is the very thing I have long been hoping to see published.
I read the two copies you so kindly sent me — read them with a
great pleasure, delight, and was greatly encouraged. You will
please continue to send the magazine. Yours fraternally,
Totnoyoshi Mux ax.
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The Charity Girl
By Caroline H. Pcmberton, Author of "Stephen the Black/' u Your Little
Brother James," Etc
CHAPTER V.
HE next day, when Julian told the story of his adven-
tures at the ball and repeated somewhat drolly the
tragic plaint of Miss Gertrude Vaughn, Denning said,
with evident concern:
"That was really too bad — too bad I You should have come
to me at once — I would have helped her out sooner, had I
known — although my hands were dreadfully full during the
early part of the evening."
"I saw you in a new role," said Julian, laughing; "the Don
Quixote of the ball room, and as romantic a knight errant as
myself I It would not do, though, for us to exchange worlds."
Denning looked down modestly. "I do what I can; I like
to see young things enjoy themselves. The trouble with the
little Vaughn girl is that she has never been introduced prop-
erly. The Vaughns were a good old family in their day, but the
sister — well, no one knows the family she married into at all.
Of course, the doctor is known professionally — but this is not
Philadelphia."
"Isn't it possible for Mrs. Starling to shine a little — by her
own light ?"
"She is beautiful, and she gives charming musicales, I am
told. It will do you no harm to go there." Denning's tone was
indulgent; his smile gleamed with kindliness, albeit he had
spoken of social lines more definitely than he cared to ; the sub-
ject was painful — to be very explicit, was a vulgarity. Within
certain prescribed limits, he strove always to be the chivalrous
knight which the secret tenderness of his heart had evolved as
an ideal of manly excellence. It was a queer little world for a
knight to roam in — about as romantic as a Swiss toy village
with painted green shavings for trees, and red and white blocks
for houses— but such as it was Denning made the most of it
and compressed his knightly spirit into the narrow situation
without misgiving, with such old-fashioned simplicity and such
entire absence of any desire to create an effect, that no one
suspected him of anything more than a very commonplace kind-
ness of heart.
A week later he urged Julian to attend a large reception on
the opening night of an art exhibition, and as there was a
781
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739 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
promise of good music and pictures, Julian donned broadcloth
and fine linen again with docility.
He began to speculate with sudden interest on the probabil-
ity of meeting Mrs. Starling during the evening.
He did not meet her until the evening was nearly over. His
legs had now become weary with tramping through the galler-
ies, and his head dizzy from looking simultaneously at rows of
oil paintings and the faces of a constantly moving crowd of
people. The effort produced sensations similar to those ex-
perienced in falling from the top of a very high church steeple.
Landing suddenly upon his feet after turning a sharp corner
— as if he had really completed a successful somersault — Julian
beheld the object of his search seated upon a low divan. Her
upturned face was seriously regarding two fair-haired youths
who were standing over her in an attitude of adoration. Julian
put himself in the line of vision with her eyes and waited for a
glance of recognition. It was bestowed with such a lighting up
of welcome that he did not hesitate to station himself shoulder
to shoulder with the adoring youths, whose dissatisfaction be-
came instantly apparent.
Conversation being blocked by the anxiety of the first-comers
to monopolize it, Julian stood by Marian's side in grave con-
templation, until she demanded the reason of his silence.
"I have been wondering if I shall ever hear you sing," he
answered, with such simple directness that she felt compelled to
give him her undivided attention for three minutes. The brief
interview resulted in Marian's agreeing to sing for him, pro-
vided he should call on an evening specified, which he promised
to do. He left the reception soon afterwards, and went home to
lay his dizzy head on a pillow whereon he tossed sleeplessly
until morning.
Julian remembered soon afterward his promise to search for
the younger brothers of Martha McPherson. He set about it
rather listlessly at first, confining his efforts to mailing a series
of inquiries to the institutions which he believed might have
received them.
After two weeks of search he succeeded in tracing the elder
boy as far as a reformatory; but here his history became a
blank, for he had been given away to a farmer in Delaware, and
both the boy and the farmer had disappeared. Letters sent to
the address of the farmer had been returned with the inscrip-
tion, "Name unknown." The other child — the beatific and
beautiful "Tahmmy" — he learned had contracted, while in an
Orphans' Home, a contagious disease of the eyes; this had
caused him to be transferred to the poorhouse where, after be-
coming totally blind, he had died of inanition six months later.
Julian knew, not only by report but by personal inspection,
that this particular "Orphans' Home" was always overcrowded.
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THE CHARITY GIRL 728
He had every reason to believe that its inmates were half-
starved, yet every year a steady stream of "rescued" children
poured — benevolently — from the "Cruelty Society's" office into
this den of wretched, sore-eyed standings.
The little Princes of the Tower were smothered quickly. Why,
O ye managers, f why was it necessary to put out little "Tahm-
my's" eyes with slow, exquisite torture? Julian was in misery
as he regarded these victims of philanthropy. His vocation
seemed to have turned into a demon's opportunity. In fact,
the charity of a Christian public could hardly be said to have
exhibited a much higher sense of responsibility toward these!
children than their drunken mother had formerly evolved. If
left to herself, might she not have done as well ? Might she not
have risen to the benign tenderness of flinging one child into
the mill-grind of a reformatory and the other over the blank
wall of a city poorhouse — even though she groped her way
without the moral stimulus of adding two more children to the
thousands rescued to adorn the pages of an Annual Report?
These reflections made Julian very sick at heart. And as for
Martha — ah, poor Martha!
He was glad she was far away in the home of a Mennonite
widow, who was now instructing her in the duties of mother-
hood and the mysteries of the multiplication table at a cost to
the Association of two dollars per week. He could postpone
the painful news that one brother was lost and the other dead
until it was time to visit her. In the meantime, Martha, with-
out knowing it, was relieved of the burden of self support, and
was given time for moral and mental growth, the arrangement
being the result of a vigorous wrestling match between Julian
and his conscientious managers, who had not yet lived down a
deeply rooted conviction that their first duty to the public was
to get something for nothing; the second being to invest a
large balance in mortgages at the end of every year. Julian
argued that society owed Martha for those early years of toil
on a truck farm during which she had borne all the burdens
of life. He figured it out in dollars and cents, showing a large
balance in Martha's favor.
"Society," he explained with cunning plausibility, "had
robbed her of her childhood and had then mortgaged her future
to cover the cost of her board and lodging while she was yet a
child. Her present helpless condition expressed the terms of
the mortgage — with the interest added."
This was convincing, because many of the managers knew a
great deal more about mortgages than they did about homeless
children — though this does not imply that their knowledge of
financial operations was extensive. They felt a renewed con-
fidence in their young secretary who could thus reduce the
moral problems of the world to terms comprehensible to a
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commercial intelligence, and they repeated his remarks to their
husbands, who nodded approval with the dull stare that they
always bestowed on philanthropic schemes which they felt
bound — for some inexplicable reason — to support.
Julian made his plans to call on Marian Starling at the ap-
pointed time. As he drew near the house, the light of a street
lamp revealed a physician's sign on the window sill. He looked
at the initials which he was aware were those of Marian's hus-
band. Her delicate personality did not harmonize in his mind
with the idea of a husband — even in the abstract. There was
about her a subtle air of detachment which seemed to assert
that she belonged exclusively to herself.
He was shown into an apartment at the head of the first
flight of stairs, where he found Marian seated by ari open piano.
Gertrude was also in the room, reading a novel by the light
of a rose-shaded lamp. She accosted him, but quickly disap-
peared, throwing a peculiar glance over her shoulder at her
sister to express commiseration for martyrs who are to be sub-
jected to the terrors of boredom; but it awakened no shadow
of response in her sister's face, which remained sweetly and hos-
pitably eloquent.
Julian was aware of the presence of flowers in odd corners,
of rare pictures looking down from the walls, of rich rugs un-
der his feet, and of books and portfolios of music lying open
and accessible. His eyes fastened immediately on the white-
robed figure of Marian advancing to meet him — surely a ten-
der, beautiful incarnation of womanhood, if not a holy priest-
ess at the shrine of music I
Marian greeted him in a low voice, as if shy of revealing the
world of expression that lay in her fuller tones. They stood
together by the piano before which Julian begged her to be
re-seated. He asked her to go on with the song she had been
practicing.
There was no reason why Marian should have blushed deeply
when she began to sing before this unsophisticated young man.
It was not because she feared his criticism or distrusted her
control over her highly cultivated voice. She had sung at pub-
lic concerts without embarrassment. Perhaps she became con-
scious that she was addressing a nature that might recognize
her gift of song as a personal revelation. All her life she had
felt that her song had fallen on deaf ears — it was as if she had
been offering flowers to the blind, and incense to the insensible
— but now it seemed that she was speaking face to face and eye
to eye in a language that was understood. All this she ex-
plained to Julian afterward. Never before had the exquisite
and touching quality of her voice carried such meaning; as it
mounted from lower note to higher it seemed to gather up all
the pathos of life.
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THE CHARITY GIRL 725
"Behold the sorrows of the universe!" it said. "Behold, my
secret sorrow — and yours!" it cried to Julian. The lament was
not in the words ; neither was it wrought by the composer into
the phrases of his music ; it was the message of the voice itself.
As Julian listened, all that he had felt and suffered in his chosen
work rushed back to him; humanity's passionate cry clutched
his heart as if he were indeed a "man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief."
But when Marian ceased singing and turned her eyes upon
him with a rather wistful smile, not as if she sought applause,
but rather as if she wanted to escape from the emotions she
had raised within herself, the sorrows of the world — the irony
of civilization's boastfully recorded charities — its unnumbered
cruelties — faded away like a dream. He held his breath, and
as he followed with his eyes the hand she laid upon the bosom
of her gown — she was plucking it in an embarrassment that
was new to her — he was mindful only of the supreme claims of
the individual to escape the universal destiny.
"Music is the speech of the unhappy," Marian said, suddenly
pushing herself from the piano. "The joyousness in it is only
the joy we have missed."
"Few of us know what we have missed," said Julian ; but he
knew that he was merely repeating something he had read, and
he blushed for the truism.
"Happy are they who never find out I" she answered, looking
into his eyes. She asked if he could play an accompaniment.
He offered to try, and they began a serenade together. It was
as if they had started on a flight through the upper harmonies,
and could look down upon strife and sin below, the echoes of
which reached their ears without disturbing their enjoyment.
"It is hateful to sing to one's own accompaniment," Marian
sighed softly.
"It is hateful to play alone," said Julian, thinking of the
cheaply hired piano that stood in his lonely bed chamber. Later
in the evening it was disclosed that Julian had studied the violin
and flute, though sadly out of practice on either, and Marian
knew several lovely trios.
Another engagement was made for another musical evening ;
and when Julian stepped out into the night he felt with a wave
of thankfulness that he had at last returned to a world of art
and beauty after a long period of suspended animation under-
ground. He would be glad to return to his work on the mor-
row, but the discovery that it was unwholesome to remain al-
ways buried alive in one's task was surely significant and pro-
phetic of great results.
CHAPTER VI.
The weeks flew by ; Julian was now living in two worlds, with-
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out consciousness of a dual personality. In truth he was not
much given to self-analysis. He was accustomed to say that he
hoped he had a soul, but so far, it had never manifested itself
in the way psychologists delight to describe. He did not know
that it might not rise into consciousness some day like an old-
fashioned, punctilious ghost, whose time for appearing and dis-
appearing had been set between the tolling of the bell and the
crowing of the cock; but neither of these signals had as yet
been sounded in his experience. Or it might be, he said, that
a soul like a healthy organ in a healthy body could give no
hint of its existence until affected by some unhappy malady, and
by this hypothesis it were better to leave well enough alone.
The champions of moral progress are not often of a sub-
jective cast of mind. When one imagines that one is made use
of as a regenerating force, self-love is imperiled ; there is little
time for self-culture, and the sweet graces that win popularity
are too often left to take care of themselves. Whatever charm
of personality existed in Julian he had done all in his power to
destroy by overwork and anxiety.
But now his youthfulness blossomed suddenly into an ar-
tist's intense enjoyment. Into his starved musician's soul came
the joy of sharing things of beauty with a lover of beauty as
reverent as himself.
Many evenings were spent in Marian's parlor by the side
of the open piano, and often in the unobtrusive presence of an
old music teacher who played a piano accompaniment when-
ever Julian chose to experiment on the flute or violin. These
attempts were sometimes provocative of laughter from Marian ;
but her tuneful nature — even in its merriest moments — never
laughed at, but always with her comrades, and thus added
archly to the general harmony. But often they drew from her
eyes a quick look of wonder and appreciation, while the grey-
haired master gave a nod of approval to many a passage which
Julian executed with fire and delicacy.
Life seemed to be arranging itself on a basis of scales, chro-
matic chords and discords, out of which Julian found himself
evolving delicious harmonies. A fatiguing, running accompani-
ment of heavy work, including much painful scrutiny of pitiful
life tragedies, affected him as would a series of complicated
arpeggios requiring flying leaps of action, such as Chopin builds
for his exquisite and most difficult nocturnes; to his artistic
soul this seemed a masterful groundwork, above which now
soared the new and lovely melodies of his life — like the song
of birds in the tree tops of a dense forest.
Never, however, did he go to Marian's house unbidden, ex-
cept on one occasion when he was not admitted, although her
voice floated distinctly down the stairway to his ear. His visits
were arranged to avoid interference with her other engage-
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THE CHARITY GIRL 727
ments, of which he knew she had many. Thus he avoided an
awkward meeting of strangers, and Marian was able to give
him her undivided attention for whole evenings. On Sunday
he met her often on the street, sometimes walking with a tall,
dark man whose deep-set, fierce-looking eyes were fixed upon
her face. Julian supposed him to be her husband until he met
Dr. Starling soon afterward in his own house. Their inter-
course was formal and infrequent. He often heard the doctor's
footsteps about the house, and occasionally his voice address-
ing patients in tones that were depressingly cold and meas-
ured. Marian told him that the doctor had no comprehension
of music and was rather annoyed by it than otherwise. So the
parlor door was generally closed when the music lovers played
their trios.
The tall dark man sank into ignominy when Marian explained
that he was a morbid creature who could find nothing in the
world worth living for, and was bored to the point of extinc-
tion even when she exerted herself heroically to interest him.
It was her kindly ambition to bring him to a sense of obliga-
tion to the world around him, but so far her efforts had been
unsuccessful. But one day she startled Julian by alluding to
the bored stranger as her "evil genius," to which Julian replied
playfully that he had supposed her role to be that of an admon-
itory angel; it was confusing to picture supernatural beings
holding such involved relationships ! One should eliminate the
other.
"Have you never pitied Mephistopheles ?" asked Marian
looking away from him with a dreamy expression. "Suppose
an angel had descended to help that wretched, sin-satiated crea-
ture?*
"To fight him, you mean," said Julian, laughing, but glancing
behind her somewhat uneasily, as if half expecting to discover
a shadowy form at the back of her chair.
"He is not there," she said, smiling; "but if he were, this
would put him to flight."
She struck the opening chords of the celebrated largo of
Handel's, and Julian picking up his violin to accompany her,
dismissed his uncomfortable fancies. At any rate, the evil gen-
ius could not play a note of Handel's ; he would not live alone in
boredom if music were within his reach.
In Julian's other world, it might be said that the shadows were
not quite as black as they had been. Emergencies were not
as much the order of the day as formerly; misfortunes were
to be expected, but it was certainly the part of wisdom to in-
troduce a little philosophy into one's contemplation of them.
The woes of humanity which Julian carried so close to his heart
had become a somewhat more adjustable burden ; the load could
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728 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
now be shifted about, and there were times when it could be
shoved altogether out of sight.
It was odd that among his assistants, Elizabeth should stand
forth as the most helpful. More and more Julian began to de-
pend upon her for the performance of difficult tasks. If a run-
away boy were to be apprehended, Elizabeth was found to be
the one who could be counted upon to return with the boy
held fast by the hand. If there were crying children to be
soothed, Elizabeth, detached from her writing and sent up->
stairs, produced a dove-like peace in three minutes. When it
was a question of eliciting confidences, it was Elizabeth's ear
that received the pitiful tale or the long-hidden, childish ambi-
tion to break down barriers and achieve the impossible. And
yet one could not discern what was the Russian maid's secret
of power. So silent — so self-repressed was she — a quick glance
of her eyes was often her only response when she arose to exe-
cute Julian's commands. Her stock of sympathy could not be
described as abundant; or possibly her ability to express it
was weak. In dealing with children she may have found chan-
nels of expression unknown to other adult mortals ; but when
Julian followed her, as he did once through curiosity, he found
the same inexpressive Elizabeth; the children were crowding
fearlessly against her, but her only form of communication with
them seemed to be a series of abrupt questions and answers,
such as shy, strange children address to each other when they
first meet.
Julian found it often convenient to require heavier tasks of
Elizabeth than he would have deemed prudent to ask of any
other assistant. She never rebelled, and he thought it prob-
able that she suffered less through her sympathies than the
others. She was not given to headaches, she was innocent of
hysterics, and she appeared to be indifferent to the length of
a day's service. It was only when summer had set in, that
Julian noticed with some remorse that her color was fading and
her young face looking thin and tired.
It was the season for holidays, but on broaching the subject,
he discovered that Elizabeth's only plan was to visit a farmer's
wife with whom she had once lived in a state of partial servi-
tude, and whom she personally disliked. Julian then appealed
to his mother, and drew such a pathetic picture of Elizabeth's
friendlessness, that the good lady wrote back promptly inviting
Elizabeth to spend two weeks with her. This was a charitable
offer, and Julian exerted himself to bring about its acceptance.
Finding the young Russian disposed to demur, he asserted the
authority of a guardian and asked her to prepare a letter of
acceptance. He made some corrections ; the letter was mailed,
and a few days later Elizabeth was put on the train that was to
carry her to Julian's quiet country home in the interior of New
York state.
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** SOCIALISM ABROAD **
Professor E. Untcrmann
RUSSIA.
In order to understand the deep significance of the widespread
manifestations that shake the foundations of absolutism in Russia, it
Is necessary to know that the longing for more freedom in accord with
economic, scientific, literary and artistic progress pervades all strata
of society. The young tsar was the star whose light was expected
to penetrate the gloom of darkest Russia. But on January 17, 1895,
Nicholas II. crushed the fond hopes of his people "by declaring: "Let
all know that I devote all my strength to the good of my people, but
that I shall uphold the principle of autocracy as firmly and unflinch-
ingly as did my ever lamented father."
Ever since, the revolutionary sentiment has been growing. Most
active in its propagation were the young students of both sexes. En-
thusiastic, courageous and resourceful, they spread the agitation among
workingmen, secretly and in constant danger of losing their lives.
Through their initiative and by their assistance, the Working Class
Emancipation Leagues of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev and the Rua*
sian Social Democratic Party were formed. Strengthened by these
organizations, the workingmen were enabled to test their strength in
several strikes and force the government to acknowledge their demand
for a law limiting the hours of labor. At the same time, the sym-
pathy with this movement grew among all classes.
On the 5th of March, the anniversary of the emancipation of the
serfs, the male and female students of Petersburg made a revolu-
tionary demonstration. The police and the Ural Cossacks, who had
been kept In readiness for the occasion, attacked them and drove them
to the police station. Many students were killed and about sixty se-
verely wounded. Women were beaten down with nagaikas (cos-
sacks' whips), trampled upon, dragged along the streets by their hair
and kicked to death. The multitude, who had come to view the pro-
cession, sided with the students and defended, them against the cos-
sacks. Workingmen, artists, literary men and even officers tried to
keep the cossacks back. The latter finally succeeded in arresting
about 300 students. Some of these were sentenced to be hung, others
were forced to serve as common soldiers in the ranks of southern regi-
ments. Of these, about 20 refused to take the military oath. It
was rumored that they would be sent to Siberia, but later reports do
not confirm this and their fate is unknown. One student was shot
because he struck an officer who had insulted him.
No wonder that the students, in several orderly and well-conducted
meetings, passed resolutions demanding protection by properly con-
stituted courts of Justice against the insolence of the police. No won-
der that another still more violent demonstration took place on March
17. The atrocities committed by the cossacks on this second occasion
defy all description.
729
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Society stood aghast With praiseworthy unanimity, the students
of all other universities in the empire followed the example of their
Petersburg comrades, and in a short time, 30,000 students refrained
from attending lectures. Several professors sided with them and
were promptly discharged and arrested. Others had to close their
departments from lack of attendance. On being officially ordered to
continue his lectures, one professor said: "All right, but where am I
to lecture, in jail or at the university?"
Forty-five of the most prominent Russian writers signed a docu-
ment protesting against these outrages, and unable to obtain redress
at home, appealed to the sympathies of the world. But the tsar de-
fies the world and arrests many of the men and women who champion
the cause of humanity.
Even in the army and navy revolutionary echoes answered the
challenge of feudal despotism. A tsar cannot stop the law of evolution.
By inoculating the army with such revolutionary elements as Rus-
sian, students are, Nicholas unconsciously becomes one of those forces
that, aiming at evil, must produce good.
It must be remembered that he has indulged in the practice of
forcing rebellious students into the ranks since July, 1899. During
this time thousands were subjected to this degredation. In the mil-
itary district of Kiev alone, over 2,000 students from different univer-
sities are serving their term as privates. The good seed is bearing
fruit. Nor were the demonstrations and protests confined to Russia
alone. In Belgium, England and Italy, the students passed resolu-
tions of sympathy and entered a protest against the barbarous treat-
ment of their Russian brethren.
FRANCE
A while ago there seemed to be a well-founded hope for complete
unity of the socialist forces in France. To-day, the different parties
are farther apart than ever. A few powerful personalities can make
It possible to gather around them a host of followers and keep in dis-
cord those who should be fighting shoulder to shoulder. Though the
interests of all these men, the leaders included, are absolutely iden-
tical, still they prefer to split on questions of theory and tactics, and
march on separate roads. As in actual warfare, so on the political
battlefield marching separately may be advantageous, but only for the
purpose of striking together.
However, in the third congress of French socialists to be held
during the last days of May in Lyons, the Guesdists will not be repre-
sened. "Neither in Lyons nor anywhere else" is the slogan issued
by their organ, "Le Sociallste." None of the other parties participat-
ing in the congress shows the least inclination to merge its identity
into a great party comprizing them all. The Allemanists, the Blan-
quits, the Broussists and the Independents, each and all prefer to
maintain their own pet organization. In view of the many and diffi-
cult problems requiring Immediate solution in France, one feels
tempted to exclaim: "Socialists unite! You have nothing to lose but
a few leaders!"
Jaures declares in the "Petite Republique" his intention of Intro-
ducing at the Lyons congress a motion that a socialist shall be per-
mitted to enter a capitalistic cabinet only with the consent of two-
thirds of t^e party delegates.
Meantime the struggle against capitalism still continues with vary-
ing fortune. The strike in Marseilles seems to be ending in a fizzle,
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SOCIALISM ABROAD 781
If we can believe the Information given by the capitalist press, and
little, if any, actual benefit will result from It to the toilers.
In Montceau-les-Mines, the "yellow" scabs— poor deluded army of
unemployed— are taking the places of their class-conscious fellow-work-
ers, protected by troops. The soldiers are replaced by new companies
from time to time, In order to prevent their being influenced by the
strikers, who appeal to them not to shoot the men of their own class.
Bouverl, the socialist mayor of Montceau-les-Mines, writes in "Le
Mouvement Socialiste":
"We are tired of being oppressed, bullied and cheated. We want
the liberty of our conscience. We demand only our share of sunshine.
In order to obtain It, we shall stop at nothing. . . . We count on
the French proletariat for the triumph of our just endeavors."
SWITZERLAND.
The dependence of Swiss industry on foreign imports, the absence
of large industrial centers, the mingling of agricultural with industrial
laborers and the influx of foreign laborers, who are not naturalized
and cannot vote, confront socialist propaganda in Switzerland with
difficulties not met in any other country.
Agricultural laborers are, as a rule, not as well informed, less inde-
pendent and more conservative than city laborers. The difficulty of
organizing them is increased by their distribution over a wide extent
of territory. And the number of foreigners, amounting to 15 per cent
of the entire population, gives rise to national jealousy increased by
the fear of competition.
Under these circumstances, the absence of at least one great source
of dissension among socialists ofc other countries is very opportune-
theoretical discussions.
"The Swiss laborer," writes Otto Lang in "Le Mouvement Socia-
liste," "takes no interest In the discussion of theoretical questions. The
conviction that the socialists have practical problems of the utmost
urgency to solve, gives harmony to their movement. They realize that
the union of exploiters necessitates a union of the exploited. There-
fore, they are tolerant in points of theory."
The socialist movement in Switzerland did not acquire any political
influence until 1880. At present the strongest political organization,
the Swiss Union of Grutll, numbers about 11,500 members in 824 sec-
tions, while the number of socialist votes amounts to about 100,000,
equal to 13 per cent of the total vote.
The strongest labor union is the Federation of Swiss laborers,
comprising about 200,000 members, while the number of skilled work-
ers organized in trade-unions is about 40,000, equal to 20 per cent of
the laborers employed in trades.
• With the progress of economic evolution, the socialist movement
In Switzerland is gaining ground steadily.
Such Incidents as that related In the following Item, which is not
clipped from the capitalistic press, tend to hasten the process:
During the last two months a strike was fought out at Azwll
(Canton St. Gallen) between 120 metal workers and the owners of the
machine factory, Benninger & Go. Although no disturbance had taken
place, the president and all the members of the strike committee were
suddenly arrested. The "Arbeiter Stimme" (Voice of the Workers)
reports the mayor of Azwil as saying to a member of the committee:
"If the leaders of the strikers will go to Benninger and announce that
work will be resumed, they will get a note from him requesting the
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732 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
sheriff to release the prisoners." America is not the only place in the
world, where the officials, elected by the workingmen, assist the capi-
talistic masters. There is no liberty for workers in a capitalistic re-
public!
SPAIN.
In the interest of truth, we are compelled to state that the recent
disturbances in Spain are not, as generally represented, of socialist
origin. True, the source of the trouble is found in the economic field.
It is the unprecedented economic development— of the religious orders.
By dint of superior business talent, acquired by the study of the
saintly Ignatius Loyola, these orders enter into competition with the
middle class industrials and actually push them to the wall. And lo,
the God-fearing bourgeois friend of the church suddenly becomes a
priest-hater.
This sentiment found vent in the boyish demonstrations of some
hot-headed middle class students, who regarded the recent marriage
of the Princess of Asturia to Don Carlos de Bourbon as a further
strengthening of the clerical position. The rowdy element, always
ready for pranks of this kind, joined them. Stones were thrown at
some Jesuits, windows broken in some convents, police and soldiers
Indulged in a free fight with the mob and killed a few innocent per-
sons, as usually, and— the cause was given for demonstrations of a
similar character all over the land.
The socialists have no interest in this farce. There is nothing in it
either for them or the cause of the proletariat. As individuals and as
a party, they don't care how much their common enemies lacerate
one another. They can only work on patiently and wait for the
enlightening influence of economic evolution. In a country so back-
ward in industrial development as Spain, socialist influence unhappily
misses one of its strongest allies, the educating force of economic
pressure.
"A more rapid advance on the road of progress will be made,"
says Pablo Igleeias in "Le Mouvement Socialiste," "when the bour-
geoisie will more clearly understand its own interest and when the
proletariat, more powerful and numerous than at present, will exert
its influence on public affairs."
The socialist press, hitherto represented by a few weeklies and
periodicals of a somewhat vague and Utopian character, lately re-
ceived a valuable addition in the form of a monthly, "La Nueva Bra"
(The New Era), designed to fight the battle of the proletariat on
scientific lines. Among its contributors is Bebel, the noted German
socialist A. Garcia Quejido, 31 Gobernador, bajo, Madrid, is the
editor.
DENMARK.
The Danish government is no longer "in it." During the last five
years the conservative party has been losing ground rapidly. In 1895,
the number of conservatives was reduced from 32 to 24 of 114 seats
in the Folkething; in 1806 this number further decreased to 16; and
at the recent elections they only secured 8 seats, and these by very
narrow margins. No more than 5 of the newly elected candidates will
support the government.
The number of socialist votes has increased by 11,100 during the
last three years. Beginning with 268 votes in 1872, the socialists in-
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SOCIALISM ABROAD 788
creased their vote to 8,408 in 1887. Three years later, In 1890, they
obtained 17,232 votes in ten election districts; in 1802, they received
20,094 votes in 15 districts; in 1895, 24,508 in 17 districts; in 1898,
31,872 in 23 districts; and in 1901, 42,972 in 30 districts.
Most surprising is the growth of socialism in the provinces. In
districts that placed a socialist candidate into the field for the first
time, over 1,000 socialist votes were cast.
The number of moderates decreased from 36,587 in 1898 to 23,606.
Although only half as strong as the socialist vote, this number, thanks
to the iniquitous Danish election laws, secured 15 seats for the mod-
erates, while the socialists with all their strength only place 14
candidates.
The rest of the seats went to the radicals.
The elections for the Folkething brought a complete defeat to
the government The returns are as follows: 73 reformers, 15 mod-
erates, 14 socialists, 6 conservatives and 2 independents.
AUSTRALIA.
The Socialist Labor Party of Australia recently took part In the
general elections for the first time. The party is only two years old
and was formed by the separation of the socialistic elements from the
Labor Party.
In the program of the new party we find the following demands:
Universal and equal suffrage; the initiative and the referendum;
abolition of the standing army and institution of a militia; refusal to
the eight-hour day; direct employment of laborers by municipalities;
pass the marine budget, until the navy will belong to Australia
instead of England.
Nothing is known as yet about the outcome of the elections.
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THE WORLD OF LABOR
By Max S. Hayes
New York and Chicago dally papers and technical journals are dis-
cussing a new revolutionary device which makes it possible for any
person who can operate a typewriter to send a telegram. By the
skillful manipulation of electrical currents a typewriter keyboard lo-
cated 400 miles from the receiving point has been so arranged that it
recorded words which were spelled out by an operator. Frank D.
Pearue is the inventor of this marvelous device, which will probably
revolutionize telegraphy in the near future. Until two years ago
Pearue was superintendent of construction for the Iowa Telephone
Company, and made his home in Davenport, Iowa, but recently he has
spent most of his time in Chicago and Syracuse, N. Y., where his
models are manufactured. He has protected all his rights by patents,
and demonstrations given in Chicago and Omaha prove beyond the
shadow of a doubt that the Pearue printing telegraph will supplant
the old-fashioned system. "I expect to perfect my machine and make
it possible to use it in connection with the Mergenthaler type-setting
machine/' said the inventor. "In a short time it will be possible to
send a message from New York to Chicago and put it into type without
the assistance of an operator at the receiving end or a typewriter. My
invention will revolutionize the transmission of news." Four distinct
parts make up the apparatus, which does the sending and printing of
messages. The sender is a keyboard which has electric wires con-
nected with each key and is similar in appearance to the keyboard of
any writing machine. At the receiving end are a selecter and inter-
mediate switch, and the portion of the typewriter which does the
printing. One remarkable feature of the new system of telegraphy
is that it can be used on either telephone or telegraph wires, and that
the wires may be used for other purposes while messages are being
transmitted. The operation of the Pearue machine in no way inter-
feres with telephonic communications which are being sent over the
same line, and is possible while the line is being used by a Morse
machine. There is a variation in the strength of the currents which
are transmitted by touching different keys. The selecter and switch,
which are situated at the receiving station, are so effected by these
currents that electrical connection is made with the letter which cor-
responds to the key which was struck by the operator, and the words
are printed automatically. The great telegraph companies of the
United States have allowed Pearue the use of their lines and are said
to be negotiating for the use of the new device. These facts are
worthy of the careful thought of telegraph operators and printers
and others who imagine that the world stands still.
Contrary to general expectations, the miners did not go on strike,
though there are some ominous rumblings in Pennsylvania, Indiana
and other states. The anthracite men demanded recognition of their
union and joint conference with the operators, but the latter refused
784
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THE WORLD OF LABOR 785
to yield. It is now stated that J. P. Morgan assured the representa-
tives of the miners that if the organization could demonstrate that it
can control its members, and prevent them from inaugurating local
strikes, the union would be recognized at the beginning of the new
year. It may be stated here, on very excellent authority, that Mitchell
and his friends took several other important matters into account in
agreeing to a temporary truce, one of which was the fact that the
hard coal men have been too recently organized to clearly understand
the discipline and sacrifice that is required in a long national struggle,
which could have been expected if a strike had been ordered. Another
fact is that complete harmony does not exist in the national union.
The Lewis-Dolan faction is opposed to Mitchell, who is charged with
being too radical, and it is significant that at the Columbus conference
with the bituminous operators the latter cheered Lewis, while Mitchell
was treated with the utmost formality. Further facts will probably
develop in the near future that may demonstrate the wisdom of the
course adopted.
Labor continues to fare badly at the hands of the courts. The eight-
hour laws relating to public work in Ohio and Washington, the enact-
ment of which cost the unions of those states no mean sums of money
as well as plenty of hard work, have been badly disfigured. In the
latter state the Supreme Court declared with great profundity, that
the eight-hour law merely applies to day laborers, and not to those
who are employed under contract by the week, month or year. As
workers are seldom If ever employed by contractors for one day at a
time, it will be readily seen that chicanery has practically killed the
law. In Ohio a circuit court curtly threw out a case in which a con-
tracting firm had been sued for employing laborers more than eight
hours a day, the law stipulating that $50 must be paid for each day
that the law was violated. The court did not deign to give any other
reason for its action than to state that "the law is unconstitutional,"
and that decisions in similar cases in Nebraska and New York covered
the case brought up from Cleveland.
Municipal elections held in New England, New York, Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and one or two other states show
steady increase in the Socialist, excepting the old Socialist Labor (or '
De Leon) party, which has almost completely disappeared.— Both the
Chicago and Springfield factions of the Social Democratic party, as
well as a number of independent state and local Socialist organizations
have voted almost unanimously to hold a joint convention and formally
and finally amalgamate. Negotiations are now being carried on to
definitely arrange the date for the convention, which will probably be
held in Indianapolis.— A number of national organizers are now in the
field forming local branches, and arrangements are being made to
divide the country into circuits and send out more organizers.
Building craftsmen have been, very successful in Pittsburg, Buffalo,
Cleveland, St. Louis and other large cities in gaining concessions in
the matter of higher wages, shorter workday and other Improved con-
ditions. Iron workers and blast furnace laborers have also gained
slight advances. On May 20 the machinists will make a national
move to enforce the nine-hour day. They expect to have trouble
in a number of cities, and request all unorganized machinists to join
the union, as well as the aid of sympathizers to strengthen their lines,
in order that their fight may be a successful one.— Longshoremen ac-
cepted slight reduction at lower lake ports, and engineers are still on
strike at this writing.
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786 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
City council of New Haven, Conn., passed a resolution requiring that
only union labor be employed on municipal work. Corporation council
knocked out the resolution, claiming that It was unconstitutional, in-
terfering with the "freedom of contract," etc. He concluded by say-
ing: "This very question, whether a city has a right in making con-
tracts to discriminate In favor of union men, has been decided by a
number of courts, and in every case the court has decided against
such a right."
Another step has been taken in the game of court injunctions that
capital is playing against labor. In Waterbury, Conn., the unionists
were carrying on an aggressive and effective boycott against a scab
bakery. The boss went into court and not only secured an injunction,
but also attached the savings in a bank belonging to two members
of the brewers' union in a suit for $2,000 damages, and good lawyers
opine that he can get a pretty good piece of their money.
New York cigarmakers, the national union and the A. F. of L. have
combined in sending out a joint circular calling attention to the fact
that 5,000 craftsmen are locked out in the former city, and that the
uewly-organized cigar trust is absorbing and building factories all over
the country and making war on trade unions. All unionists and
sympathizers are urged to purchase only cigars the boxes of which
bear the blue union label.
May Day will be celebrated by holding parades and meetings in
many cities. In New York the trade unions and Social Democrats
have united for an imposing demonstration in favor of the eight-hour
day. In Philadelphia, Chicago, St Louis, Cleveland and other places
the same elements will join in making demands for better conditions
for those who toil.
Despite the settlement of the Chicago building trades' strike and
lockout with the understanding that the council should pass out of ex-
istence, a reorganization is taking place, all but one or two conserva-
tive organizations taking part. It's another case where the so-called
leaders were unable to hold the rank and file in line.
New York Legislature turned down two labor bills in one day, break-
ing the record in showing contempt for unions. One was to compel
street railways to place vestibules on cars, and the other to prevent
courts from Issuing injunctions in times of strikes.
Labor Commissioner Carroll D. Wright is quoted as saying that the
employers' liability laws of the various states are practically worth-
less as a means of protection to injured employes. Now, will you be
good, and careful?
Railway trainmen and boot and shoe workers have absorbed many
local unions in Canada recently and added thousands of members to
their rolls.
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SOCIALISM AND RELIGION
Professor George D. Herron
Towards the gifts of Mr. Carnegie to the public, the socialist can
have but one attitude. While refusing to pass any judgment upon
the giver's motives or individual character, he cannot but regard cap-
italistic gifts of libraries and semi-public institutions as an unqualified
curse to society. They thoroughly blind the eyes of the people as to
the real human issue— the issue now dividing the world into a capital-
istic or exploiting class on the one side, and a producing and exploited
class on the other side. It is easy to get glory by giving away what
does^not belong to one; easy to get glory by ostentatiously presenting
to society a fraction of that which has been wrested from it by sheer
economic might and cunning. So easy is glory thus obtained that a
metropolitan clergyman has just hailed Mr. Carnegie as a new Mes-
siah. But the reception of such gifts by the class that establishes our
moral and intellectual standards is a disclosure of the utter prostitu-
tion of the teachers and morals of civilization. Only a society thor-
oughly grounded in immorality and inhumanity— a base and prosti-
tuted society, without faith, or religion, or ethics— could fail to discern
and analyze the sources and character of its munificent gifts. It is a
society that kisses the hands of those who successfully exploit and de-
stroy it; a society that halls as public benefactions, institutions that live
by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the people; a society
that mistakes successful parasitism for genius and philanthropy. With
such imposture and social ignorance the socialist can make no terms.
From such hands the socialist can receive no gifts, no favors, no con-
cession, no compromises; for in so doing he simply puts into the hands
of his capitalistic destroyer a torch with which to burn down the
socialist house.
This makes perfectly clear the ethical or spiritual integrity of the
class-conscious position. Nothing can obviate the horrible truth that
one class is producing the things upon which the world lives, and that
another class is luxuriously living off the producing class. The class
that produces in no real sense lives; while the class that consumes
produces hideous misery, waste and disorder. Yet this parasitical
and devouring class makes the laws, the religions, the morals, the
education, of the class upon whjch it lives and which it devours. To
try to Identify the interests of these two classes; to try to bridge the
787
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
788 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
cbasm which lies between them and which ought to lie between them;
to try to mend an exploiting and sponging civilization by wresting
or accepting concessions or privileges from it; anything resembling
a concealment or misapprehension of this class distinction is a be-
trayal of the people and of the socialist cause. Any attempt at social
reform or progress by any other than a thorough-going class-conscious
socialist movement is to again build upon the old lie upon which civil-
ization now rests. Evade this lie at the heart of civilization as we
will; garni 8h it, sanctify it, institutionalize it as we may, the lie re-
mains; and no religion, no culture, no state, no custom, no god, has
power to make a lie moral, or safe, or sane. Yet it is a plain and
evident truth that existing institutions and their scribes are deluded
with the notion that they can build truth and righteousness upon a
lie. They will fail, as they ought to fail, and their every seeming suc-
cess is but a tragedy and a fundamental Immorality.
If the socialist would keep his hands clean and his eyes clear, he
must accept no favors from capitalistic teachers, or churchmen, or
philanthropists, or politicians. He need sit in judgment upon no in-
dividual's character; but he needs to discern very clearly and con-
stantly the nature of the capitalistic system, and the fatality of receiv-
ing any favors or compromises at its hands. A great teacher once
said to a ruling-class inquirer, who came to him by night because he
was ashamed and afraid to be found seeking the truth in the open
day, that he could not be saved from his false living by mending his
ways; he could only be saved by ending his then existing quality of
living and beginning an entirely new quality of life. In fine, Nico-
demus must be born again; he must undergo a complete revolution.
Most aptly and urgently can the figure of the new birth be applied to
civilization. Its ways cannot be mended; they can only be ended.
Civilization cannot be reformed by public libraries from Mr. Car-
negie, nor by municipal water-works and milk- wagons; it must under-
go complete revolution; it must be born again. There must be a
wholly new quality of civilization before a free, sound and truthful
ethic can even take root. To preach the socialist revolution is the
sacred duty of the hour. To consent to nothing less is the present test
of noble faith. Revolution with the socialist must be a religion, a
moral splendor, a holy and regenerating task. No other preparation
for a true morality, a natural and indigenous religion, is possible.
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^
BOOK REVIEWS
dt
Industrial and Pecuniary Employments. Prof. Thorsteln Veblen,
University of Chicago. [Paper read at the thirteenth annual meeting
of the American Economic Association, Detroit, December 29, 1900.]
Whether considered as a scientific criticism of current economic
thought, a biting satire on classical political economy or as an exposi-
tion of socialist philosophy this pamphlet must be admitted to be a
masterpiece. Beginning with the statement that "The economists of
the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were believers in a Provi-
dential order, an order of nature," he points out that their main task
was to bring the facts of economic life under these natural laws. So-
ciety was assumed to be an organism engaged in the production of
goods and the energy so expended was supposed to be exactly equiva-
lent to the resulting product This same equivalence was supposed to
hold good in each economic process although such a supposition "re-
mains a dogmatic postulate whose validity cannot be demonstrated in
any terms that will not reduce the whole proposition to an aimless
fatuity." "Under the resulting natural-economic law of equivalence
and equity, it is held that the several participants or factors in the
economic process severally get the equivalent of the productive force
which they expend. They severally get as much as they produce; and
conversely, in the normal case they severally produce as much as they
get." However, as this position becomes more and more difficult to
maintain, productiveness is translated into "serviceability" and it is
held that whoever performs any essential "service" in existing society
is engaged in production. But there begins to appear a series of oc-
cupations which tax even this ingenious phraseology and so Prof. Veb-
len gravely suggests that it would be well to introduce a new classifica-
tion into classical economics and make a new division into "pecuniary"
and "industrial" employments. At present, he says, "acquisition is
treated as a sub-head under production, and effort directed to acquisi-
tion is construed in terms of production. . . . Pecuniary activities
are handled as Incidental features of the process of social production
and consumption, as details incident to the methods whereby the social
interests are served, instead of being dealt with as the controlling
factor about which the modern economic process turns." The great
task of the political economists has been to somehow justify the exist-
ence of these "pecuniary employments" and find them a place in some
scheme of production. "But the fact has come to be gradually more
and more patent that there are constantly, normally present In modern
economic life an important range of activities and classes of persons,
who work for an income, but of whom It cannot be said that they,
either proximately or remotely, apply themselves to the production of
goods. . . . Such pecuniary employments . . . are nearly all,
and nearly throughout, conditioned by the institution of property or
ownership." When we come to attempt to justify the existence of this
780
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740 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
class by their serviceability to the productive process as a whole we
find that "the cause of the dependence of Industry upon business In a
given case is to be sought in the fact that other rival ventures have the
backing of shrewd business management, rather than in any help
which business management in the aggregate affords to the aggregate
industry of the community." These latter are principally engaged In
giving the character of "vendibility" to the goods produced by the in-
dustrial workers.
"What the Marxists have named the 'Materialistic Conception of
History' is assented to with less and less qualification by those who
make the growth of culture their subject of inquiry. This material-
istic conception says that institutions are shaped by economic condi-
tions." Now bringing this to bear upon the present organization of
society it is seen that "in our time, in many branches of industry, the
specialization has been carried so far that large bodies of the working
population have but an incidental contact with the business side of the
enterprise, while a minority have little if any other concern with the
enterprise than its pecuniary management"
"The two classes of occupations differ in that the men in the pecu-
niary occupations work within the lines and under the guidance of the
great institution of ownership, with its ramification of custom, prerog-
ative and legal rights; whereas those in the industrial occupations are,
in their work, relatively free from the constraint of this conventional
norm of truth and validity." As a horrible result of this condition of
things the men in the industrial pursuits, not having much to d# with
the ownership of property grow to have a disrespect for the institution
as such. A result of this is that "the most insidious and most alarming
malady, as well as the most perplexing and unprecedented that threat-
ens the modern social and political structure is what is vaguely called
socialism. The point of danger to the social structure and at the same
time the substantial core of the socialistic disaffection, is a growing
disloyalty to the Institution of property, aided and abetted as it is by a
similarly growing lack of deference and affection for other conven-
tional features of social structure. The classes affected by socialistic
vagaries are not consistently averse to a competent organization and
control of society, particularly not in the economic respect, but they
are averse to organization and control on conventional lines. The
sense of solidarity does not seem to be either defective or in abeyance,
but the ground of solidarity is new and unexpected. ... To the
socialist 8 property or ownership does not seem inevitable or inherent
in the nature of things. . . . Among these men, who by the
circumstances of their daily life are brought to do their serious and
habitual thinking in other than pecuniary terms, it looks as if the
ownership preconception were becoming obsolescent through disuse.
. . . The industrial classes are learning to think in terms of
material cause and effect, to the neglect of prescription and conven-
tional grounds of validity."
These scattered extracts can give but a faint Idea of the charm and
ability of the work. It takes all the pet phrases of the classical
economists of the colleges and uses them t# make their teaching
ridiculous. How any of the professors who listened to this talk could
go back to their classes and continue their work with sober faces is
hard to comprehend.
A Visit to a Gnani. Edward Carpenter. Alice B. Stockham Co.
1S4 pp. $1.00.
Of all the books treating of the new psychic thought in its relation
to occult phenomena, this is perhaps most satisfactory for the average
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
BOOK RE VIE WS 741
reader, and especially the socialist reader. There is a sanity and a
reasonableness about it that appeals to the reader whether he believes
in the phenomena described or not, and it must be admitted that
much that is found in Oriental lands requires either further investiga-
tion of Western science or else a recasting of some of the principles
of that science.
Edward Carpenter: Poet and Prophet Ernest H. Crosby. Published
by ,4 The Conservator," Philadelphia. Paper 50 pp.
This is at once a biographical essay (with portrait), a summary of
Carpenter's Works and philosophy and a series of observation on va-
rious subjects by the author. In covering so much there must be
something neglected, but as a whole the work is well done. In this
age of reviews, summaries and condensations this little work cannot
but be of value to those who have not the time to read all of Car-
penter's works. There is much keen analysis of present conditions,
and striking criticisms of present abuses but little that is definite and
constructive. But since there are many who are now doing the con.
structive work this can but do good, and will reach and be read by
many who will be caught by the charm of its literary style and thus
be led to read further.
Peru Before the Conquest 6. B. Benham. International Publishing
Co., San Francisco. Paper 94 pp.
It has long been known that the government of Peru had solved
the problem of poverty and through a paternal despotism was able
to provide the necessaries of life for all its members as well as great
luxury for the few and at the same time accomplish works of engi-
neering that are still the wonder of those accustomed to modern works
of that kind. But all information regarding this organization of so-
ciety has been hitherto concealed in expensive volumes beyond the
reach of the average worker. Hence this little volume is a welcome
addition to the literature of socialism as showing that misery and
suffering are wholly unnecessary. On the other hand the author ia
very careful to point out that, aside from the fact of Industry being
organized, there is no resemblance whatever between the empire of
the Incae and the co-operative commonwealth into which capitalism
is growing.
BOOKS RECEIVED
Our June number will contain an extensive review of Prof. Jacques
I/oeb's Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psy-
chology, one of the most epoch making works that has appeared in
many years, which recasts a whole science and brings it into accord
with socialist philosophy.
The Procession of Planets t Franklin H. Heald, Los Angeles, Cal.,
Paper 93pp., $1.00.
The Politics of the Nazarene, O. D. Jones, J. A. Wayland, Girard,
Kan. Paper 288 pp., 50 cents.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
742 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
AMONG THE PERIODICALS
The leading article in "The International Monthly" is a study of
"The Russian People," by J. Novicow. It is an exhaustive survey of
the psychological forces at work in tne Russian Empire and contains
much of interest to the student of national psychology and will help
to a better understanding of social problems.
Perhaps the most interesting article to the social student in the April
number of "The World's Work" is William R. Lighton's discussion of
"Our Prairies and the Orient." He points out that in the central por-
tion of the United States there is a gigantic farm "of more than one
million square miles, capable of producing everything from cotton to
wheat, capable of yielding an abundance to feed and clothe all the
swarming millions of the earth." A large part of this, and that the
most fertile portion, must be irrigated, but we are growing to look upon
this as an advantage rather than a drawback. The great need of
some general power to organize the system of irrigation and build
great reservoirs at the head- waters of the rivers that will at once solve
the double problem of irrigation and floods is pointed out. Then the
writer goes into capitalistic ecstacies over the opportunity that "ex-
pansion" will offer to export these products to the Orient and even
points out in some thinly veiled phrases that the American farmer,
like the American wage- worker, can be exploited to the point where
he can undersell the Chinese. The portion on irrigation gains additional
interest from another article in the same number on the remarkable
solar engine now running at Pasadena, Calif. Unlike former attempts
to utilize the heat of the sun no attempt is made to utilize the heat
directly, but it is simply fccussed by a great system of mirrors upon
a peculiarly constructed steam boiler, which runs an ordinary steam
engine. This engine is used to pump water and "it lifts fourteen
hundred gallons a minute. * * * Once started the machine runs
all day without any attention whatever; it oils itself. The supply of
water for the boiler is regulated automatically, as is also the steam
pressure, and there can be no explosion." Other articles of Interest
are a very thorough discussion of "The American Trade Invasion of
England" and a series of articles on the leading men concerned with
the formation of the great steel trust.
Prof. Leon C. Prince has an article in the last number of the Arena
on "The Passing of the Declaration," in which he tells the readers of
that journal some very wholesome truths. He points out what so-
cialists have always known— that class rule in America was equally
"imperial" and absolute with that of any monarchy or empire on
earth— although he does not himself recognize the fact of class rule,
he sees that "The main trouble with the Anglo-Saxon is that he con-
stantly professes to act on higher principles than those that govern the
policy of other nations." It is about time that some socialists began
to realize with Prof. Prince that "In discarding the Declaration of In-
dependence we shall lose nothing of political or moral value. We
shall merely drop a few glittering phrases of French sophistry and ex-
ploded sham borrowed from the agitators and pamphleteers of the
Revolutionary period, and which never have been and never can be-
come a serious part of any system of political truth." What the
writer does not see, however, is that this foolery has served a valua-
ble purpose to capitalism in hoodwinking the masses and that the
abolition of this hypocrisy is much more likely to lead to the down-
fall of capitalism and all tyranny than to the extension of imperialism.
Other features are an extremely interesting article on "Farming In the
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BOOK RE VIE WS 748
Twentieth Century" (which would have been much more valuable
had its final paragraphs been guided by scientific examination instead
of imagination) and a very good review of the life and work of Ernest
Howard Crosby, with an excellent portrait There is also a review
of "Socialism in Europe and America/' which is principally remarkable
ror the number of errors and misstatements the editor hae been able
to crowd into a few pages.
Digitized by LiOOQ IC
<*
EDITORIAL
<*
AN IMPENDING DANGER TO SOCIALISM
Ou: columns are filled this month with stories of the marvelous
extent and growth of the great international socialist movement. It
Is a story of which no other age and no other movement has ever
shown the equal. It is a recital that should fill every socialist with
pride and encouragement. And while America cannot show the
solidly trained battalions of voters of Germany, the remarkable co-
operative and trade-union organization of Belgium and Denmark, or
the extensive and varied literature of France and Italy, yet it is the
American socialist above all others who has the best right to rejoice
on this May Day, when all over the world the hosts of labor are
pcsslng in review and lining up for the last desperate struggle for
human liberty that is to finally wipe away the last remnant of human
slavery from this old planet
The reason for this optimistic view may not appear at first sight.
Our vote is small, Insignificant our enemies say, although those who
know the possibilities of germs, whether of thought, seed or deed,
will hesitate about calling anything so pregnant with life and growth
of small account Our organizations are rent with internal dissen-
sions and while there is now every reason to believe that this condi-
tion will soon be at an end it is not from any of these reasons that
the greatest cause for socialist thanksgiving is to be found.
Socialism is the child of capitalism, the developed and ripened
fruit of the competitive system and impossible of realization until
that system shall have run its course and reached its culmination.
Now it is becoming a commonplace to call attention to the fact that
In America more than anywhere else that system is ripe to rottenness
—is nigh unto death with the fierce birth-pangs of a new era. Yet
few even among the socialists realize how true are the words they
so often speak, any more than they realize the magnitude o'f the num-
bers that mark the size of modern capitalistic combinations. American
capitalism is rushing on to its climax and Its disappearance at a pace
so swift and terrific that the mind is simply dazed that seeks to com-
prehend it Uke the mind of one who gazes on some mighty catastrophe
of geologic ages.
Three months ago the competitive system seemed still entrenched
behind almost impregnable barriers. Not even the most sanguine
among the socialists or most far-seeing among capitalists dreamed of
744
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
EDITORIAL 745
the revolution that was bo soon to take place. The Chicago Econo-
mist (the organ of the stock-brokers and great capitalists of this city)
in Its issue of January fifth, headed its leading editorial "The Mon-
opoly Scare Waning," and assured Its readers who were beginning
to be worried at the little cloud of concentration Just then arising
upon the horizon, that "competition between corporations is as nat-
ural as competition between individuals." A list of new and compet-
ing corporations was given and it was gravely stated that "industrial
consolidation had reached Its height." Only a little less than three
months later, in its Issue of March 30th, the leading editorial in this
same publication is headed "The Trusts Triumph" and the whole
competitive position is surrendered with the statement that "The
whole tendency of commerce is in the direction of combination of in-
dividuals and corporations engaged in the same business, and this
tendency is like a law of nature which it is useless and foolish to re-
sist" Verily the walls of the capitalistic Jericho have fallen before
the trumpet blasts of the socialist philosophy without striking a blow
and it only remains for us to enter in and possess the promised land
in the name of all the producers of wealth.
The "Billion Dollar Steel Trust" is but a stepping stone in the head-
long process of expropriation of small producers and formation of a
plutocratic autocracy that has been going on in these few months.
Eighty thousand miles of railway have been brought into practically
complete consolidation, which means that their controllers hold dominion
over the whole two hundred thousand miles of railroad with their
thirteen billion capitalization that goes to make up the inland com-
munication of the United States. The Steel Trust is gobbling up new
industries at a rate considerably in excess of one hundred million dol-
lars worth per week. Insurance companies with three and a half bil-
lions of policies and nine hundred millions of assets on hand are tak-
ing up as mere side investments the national debts of a dozen European
nations. They struggle with the recent banking trust of over $550,-
000,000 for the privilege of financing the governments of other lands
and play with rulers as they play with stock values. These latter are
so completely in the control of these gigantic combinations that the
element of chance has been abolished from stock "gambling" and
speculation has ceased to be a matter of uncertainty. Invading the
markets of the world they fill the exploiters of England and the con-
tinent of Europe with terror, and finally drunk with the very abund-
ance of their riches they seem to be rushing on toward a financial
panic that will shake modern civilization to its deepest foundation
stoies.
But they will not yield without a struggle. All along the lin*
the outposts of capitalism arc capitulating to the logic of events and
admitting that that logic has won the argument for socialism. But
here in the very hour of the victory of the producers, the exploiters
seek to make one last effort to thwart the progress of the ages and
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746 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIS1 REVIEW
cheat the laborers of the fruits of their toil. GoYernments are still Id
the control of capitalism and unless the workers wake to a sense of
their interests they will find those governments used to Install a sham
socialism under the guise of ownership of Industry by a plutocratic
state while exploitation and wage-slavery will go on as before. Just
how thoroughly the truths of socialist logic are now accepted by those
who have most to lose by their acceptance, and just how they expect
to twist them to their own purpose is shown by the following, which
constitutes the first article and leading editorial in the April number
of the Bankers' Magazine— the foremost organ of Wall street finan-
ciers and of the newly formed banking trust.
"The history of the progress of the human race abounds in in-
stances of the power of government to Influence the methods of trade
and the power of organized industry to influence the form of gov-
ernment There has always been a struggle between the forces that
rule and the masses who are ruled. • • • The business men of the
middle ages obtained scope for their energies in the midst of the op-
pression of the feudal system by organizing for themselves municipal
governments suited to the pursuits of the governed. As paternal and
proprietary governments have given way to such as are more or less
representative and derived from the people, the idea has been to shape
laws so as to encourage industry and the accumulation of property.
But there is still, even under governments purely republican, a rem-
nant of the old antagonism between the ruler and the ruled.
• • • When individual competition is uncontrolled the action of
trade and productive Industry on government is comparatively feeble,
as the conflicting interests are so numerous and contradictory that
they tend to neutralize one another. The growth of corporations and
combinations tends to strengthen the forces which seek to control the
machinery of government and the laws in behalf of special interests.
"In the United States the purely representative character of the
ruling powers lends itself easily to the control of the influence of or-
ganized industry and commerce, and in no country has the organiza-
tion of the forces of production proceeded so far with the .promise of
still greater concentration. Theoretically, the ballot controls every-
thing; but the spirit of political organization which has grown ap out-
side of legislative enactment now goes far to control the ballot In-
dustrial and commercial organization, when it desires to control the
government, either federal or state, finds a political organization ready
for its uses. The productive forces are the purse-bearers. They
furnish the means by which alone governments can be made effective.
They also furnish the means by which the political organization which
produces the government is created and becomes effective. The busi-
ness man, whether alone or in combination with other business men,
seeks to shape politics and government in a way conducive to his own
prosperity. When business men were single units, each working ont
his own success, regardless of others in desperate competition, the
men who controlled the political organizations were supreme. But as
the business of the country has learned the secret of combination, it
is gradually subverting the power of the politician and rendering him
subservient to its purposes. More and more the legislatures and exec*
utive powers of government are compelled to listen to the demands
of organized business interests. That they are not entirely controlled
by these Interests is due to the fact that business organization has
not reached its full perfection. The recent consolidation -of the Iron
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EDITORIAL 747
.and steel industries is an indication of the concentration of power that
is possible. Every form of business is capable of similar consolida-
tion, and if other industries imitate the example of that concerned
with iron and steel, it is easy to see that eventually the government
of a country, when the productive forces are all mustered and drilled
under the control of a few leaders, must become the mere tool of those
forces. There are many indications, In the control of legislatures,
that such is the tendency at the present time in the United States.
Whether the result of this tendency Is desirable or otherwise, Is
another question.
"The dream of socialism has been to have the action- of government ,
so directed that it would shape the population into a great industrial
army, in which each individual should be provided with the means of
occupation and subsistence. The natural growth of business combina-
tions will produce a similar result. If carried out to its logical con-
clusion every citizen will become the employe or dependent of some
one of the great combinations, directed by a head who in his power
of financial control will be the autocratic ruler of every Individual
of his following. If all these great combinations of particular lines
of industry are again made the subject of a still greater combination
Including in its scope all industries and trades, the men or set
of men who are at the head of this aggregation will be the real rulers
of the nation. Every professional man as well as all who pursue
every other mode of livelihood will be affiliated by the strongest ties
to one or the other of the consolidated industries. Every legislator
and every executive officer will belong to the same head. Forms of
government may not be changed, but they will be employed under
the direction of the real rulers. Of course, it is easy to see that in-
dividual independence, as now understood, is different from what it
would be under such a novel state of things, but no doubt it would
still be individual independence. Probably under a government di-
rected by a great combination of industrial and productive powers, the
degree of individual independence which each citizen sacrifices for the
good of the whole would, be no greater, and perhaps not so great, as the
independence which each citizen now sacrifices in obedience to exist-
ing law and custom. The direction of the industrial and producing
forces would enlarge independence in some directions while it might
restrict it in others. Wisely conducted, every citizen might, accord-
ing to his merit and ability, attain higher prizes in life than is possible
at the present time. Perhaps in this direction may lie some approx-
imate realization of the dreams Indulged in in Bellamy's 'Looking
Backward/ without the dangers from political corruption that would
seem to be Inevitable if Bellamy's scheme could have been attempted."
Let no socialist misunderstand this position. It is the an-
nouncement of the determination of plutocracy to defraud socialism,
the legitimate child of capitalism and brotherhood of its inheritance,
by substituting in the confusion of the transition period a bastard son
of capitalism and monopolistic greed called State Socialism. The or-
ganized trusts of America having first gained complete control of all
the forces of government would then transfer the titles of the instru-
ments of production and distribution from the capitalists as individ-
uals and corporations to the capitalists as a government.
Whether this scheme will succeed or not depends upon the action
-of the workers. If they are sufficiently Intelligent, drilled and solid-
ified to perform the mission which social evolution has created for
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748 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
them, they can come forward as an independent class-conscious polit-
ical party and themselves seize upon the powers of government and
use them for the establishment of a co-operative commonwealth. Will
they do this? Or will they spend their energies in childlike quarrels
over pride of organization and desire of leadership? No one but the
socialists can now prevent the early coming of socialism in the United
States, and anyone calling himself a socialist at this time can most
help the coming of socialism by assisting in the organization of the
socialists of this country for political action, and he is equally crim-
inal whether he stands outside all organizations in pharasaical self-
sufficiency or being in an organization dares to place any obstacle 1a
the road of the most perfect consolidation possible of socialist forces.
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Vandervelde's Collectivism.
One of the greatest needs of American Socialists has long
been a book that should, at once, give a thorough, scientific
explanation of socialism in all its phases so as to make a re-
liable text-book for socialists, and still be so simple in its lan-
guage and elementary in its treatment of the subject that it
could be put into the hands of new inquirers.
This want is now supplied in the book recently published
by Professor Emile Vandervelde, of Belgium, entitled "Le Col-
lectivisme et TEvolution Industrielle." Some idea of the value
placed upon this work by European socialists is shown by the
fact that within a few weeks from its first issue it was being
translated into German, Russian and Italian. It is also worth
noting that, although the author is a Belgian, the book is issued
by one of the foremost socialist publishing houses at Paris.
A short summary of the contents of the work will give a
clear idea of its value: The first part deals with the subject
of capitalist concentration and the disappearance of the "peas-
ant proprietors," "artisans" and "small retailers." This is dis-
cussed with a wealth of illustration and argument nowhere
-else to be found. "The Progress of Capitalist Property" is
then traced through the successive stages of corporations, mo-
nopolies and trusts. The attempts of capitalist writers to ex-
plain away this process of evolution are then taken up and
thoroughly answered.
The second part of the work deals with "The Socialization
of the Means of Production and Exchange," and is by far the
most exhaustive study of the transition from capitalism to
socialism that has yet appeared. The final chapter discusses
the objections to socialism in a thoroughly satisfactory man-
ner. Of the book as a whole, it is not too much to say that
749
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it is destined to become the standard text-book of Interna-
tional Socialism and the greatest propaganda work yet issued.
We are glad to announce for publication, about May 15, a
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Liebknecht's Life of Marx.
When the history of the Socialist movement is written, one
of its most interesting chapters will be the period when Marx,
Engels, Liebknecht and other active Socialists from the con-
tinent of Europe were exiles in England, carrying on from
there a tireless campaign with pen and press which by and by>
with the march of economic forces, brought them back in tri-
umph to their native countries. Shortly before his death Lieb-
knecht, urged by many friends, published a delightful volume
of his personal recollections of Marx, dealing mainly with the
period just mentioned.
It is not too much to say that no volume of tales ever pub-
lished would be of as intense interest to the Socialist reader as
these that Liebknecht has so charmingly told of this trying
time. There is humor that will drive away the most pro-
nounced melancholy, and a pathos that wrings the heart. No
matter what the reader may think of the doctrines held by the
characters described he cannot but be intensely interested in
the book as a series of short stories, and it is safe to say that
its literary charm will attract many who would never glance
at a work on economics. To the Socialist reader the charm
will be manyfold greater, for he will be constantly conscious
of new light on his philosophy and new facts concerning the
origin of Socialist doctrines and the beginning of the Socialist
movement.
The translation by Professor E. Untermann makes a neat
little volume of about 200 pages, with a portrait of Marx as a
frontispiece. Cloth, pocket size, 50 cents postpaid.
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PUBLISHERS' DEPARTMENT 751
The Republic of Plato.
For centuries before the formulation of the doctrines of
scientific socialism its ideals had been pictured by Utopians.
The first and greatest of these was Plato, and his "Republic"
has been the source from which all subsequent writers have
drawn for more or less of their ideas. This work has up to
the present time been the exclusive property of the leisure class,
having been printed only in the original Greek or in English
editions that were too expensive for workingmen to buy. We
are therefore glad to announce that about May 15 we shall
issue Book I. of the "Republic of Plato" in an entirely new
English version by Alexander Kerr, professor of Greek in the
University of Wisconsin.
The first book does not develop Plato's thought of an ideal
commonwealth, but clears the ground by a discussion of ethics,
and it is interesting to note that one of the characters in this
dialogue nearly 2,300 years old suggests the Socialist theory
that "good" conduct is conduct that harmonizes with the inter-
ests of the ruling class. The book will contain about sixty-
four pages, printed on extra book paper, and the price will
be 15 cents postpaid.
Socialist Songs with Music.
This is the first collection of the kind* offered to American
socialists, and has been warmly welcomed by the socialist press.
It contains an original translation of the Internationale, the
great socialist song of Europe, all of William Morris* greatest
songs, and a variety of familiar tunes with socialist words. The
book is already in use at the Socialist Temple, Chicago, and
adds greatly to the interest of the meetings. It contains 36
large pages, and is printed on extra paper with stiff cover. The
price for a single copy is 20 cents postpaid. While the first
edition lasts, orders from socialist locals will be filled at $1.00
a dozen, postpaid.
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY, Publishers,
56 Fifth Avenue, Chicago.
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Vol. I JUNE, xgox No. za
Paganism and Christianity
HE relation of socialism to Christianity has of late
been persistently thrust forward by persons embrac-
ing the theories of the so-called Christian socialism.
Despairing of introducing the doctrines of socialism
into the Christian church, they spend their efforts in an attempt
to Christianize the socialist movement. Their ablest exponents
declare that the modern scientific socialists, whether they are
conscious of it or not, follow in the steps of Jesus and aim to
realize his ideals. In their endeavors to prove this they attempt
to reconcile the sober, earthly doctrines of revolutionary social-
ism with the teachings of the meek and lowly Nazarene. Both
socialism and Christianity fare but indifferently in the process.
The significance of Christianity as an historical factor cannot
be determined without determining at the same time its rela-
tion to its antonym — paganism. It shall be my endeavor to
examine, in the brief space of an article, into the nature of
paganism and Christianity, the significance of each as an his-
torical factor in our civilization and their relation to each other.
As far as paganism is concerned I shall stand on no ceremonies.
But I am aware that Christianity is an extremely delicate sub-
ject to treat. It deals with beliefs which forbid and exclude
rational discussion. But I must insist that reason, however
weak and limited, is still the only authority which socialists
are willing to recognize in this sublunary world. Whether rea-
son is a law unto itself or is guided in its path by Providence,
we leave to theologians to discuss and decide.
The time was, but is no more, when the attitude of an adept
of science toward religion and Christianity was that of secret
or open belligerency. The decisive battles between religion and
science were fought ; science came out victorious, and true to
sm
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754 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
itself its attitude toward religion can be no other but that of
dispassionate study. The student of man and society has long
since learned to regard all religions, as well as Christianity,
as tremendous factors for good and for evil in the history of
our civilization. He approaches religion without fear, but also
without prejudice. Armed with the weapons of science, he
penetrates into the holy of holiest, not to rail and scoff in wan-
ton derision, but to study, to inquire, to sift facts and trace them
to their origin. I hope to be able to treat the subject in a meth-
od approved by the best minds. Still I ask the reader that the
cause of any relapse which I may suffer from the true method
be attributed to my own failure to master it. Science permits
no other but the dispassionate, objective method.
It is repeating a mere truism to state that the mental pro-
gress of mankind presents a continuity of development. Con-
tinuity is the law of all natural processes. Ideas of the present
time can be traced back through a winding and erratic course
into the remotest recesses of time. They undergo such changes
in form and expression as material conditions necessitate. They
are an ever present factor in the course of events, though they
may not, for the moment, be present to observation. They
may be likened, using a familiar simile, to a river that now
mirrors in its waters the sun and the stars, now disappears
from view and winds its course through underground chan-
nels, to reappear again in unexpected places.
The history of the mental development of Europe, embrac-
ing the period until the beginning of the very recent industrial
epoch, may be written by describing the origin and develop-
ment of its two chief factors — the civilization of antique Greece
and the sublime heritage it left to mankind, and the advent of
Christianity and its influence on European thought. The for-
mer we shall denote by the term, paganism ; a term proper for
its historic associations and its relation to Christianity. By
Christianity we understand the teachings of Jesus, the Chris-
tian religion and the Christian church. It would be unphiloso-
phic to dissociate the teachings of Jesus from the Christian
religion and the Christian religion from the Christian church.
While they ostensibly conflict at some period, still, if historical
epochs or the whole Christian era be considered, the closest
affinity and even identity will be found between the three.
PAGANISM.
In order to describe briefly and graphically the salient fea-
tures of Grecian character and religion, we must subtract all
adventitious elements and study them in their early unadulter-
ated condition. Homeric Greece is yet semi-barbarous. It has
not yet risen to the glorious heights of the period of Pericles.
But owing to the immense perspective of twenty-nine centuries
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PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 755
separating the observer from that period, the incidental fades
from view and only the most striking features of Grecian char-
acter are perceived. The genius of Greece, though not yet daz-
zling, is at its purest. The remarkable simplicity of the life,
manners and conceptions of * Greece of antiquity stands out
white and clear through the mist of receding centuries.
Religion — The Greek of antiquity worshiped nature in its
manifestations. He classified the phenomena into natural divis-
ions and had a deity presiding over each division. In fact he
deified the phenomena of nature. His daily contact with these
phenomena, coupled to his simple faith, formed a familiar re-
lation between him and the deities — a relation of a
child to its parents. His gods and goddesses were not
passionless beings out of place, out of time. They were of
human form, only endowed with ideal beauty of form. Like
himself, they were swayed with passions often ungratified and
suffered with balked desires. The Homeric and Hesiodic the-
ogonies are descriptive of a struggle, divine and titanic, of a
race of gods. Their powers, their objects, their stratagems
were all still human, their scale and scope only being divine.
The residence or headquarters of the gods was on the moun-
tain of Olympus. Zeus presided over the divine conclave and
other gods and goddesses were subordinate to him. But they
were full of intrigue of love and war. They meddled contin-
ually into the affairs of men, not through unfathomable omnis-
cience and omnipresence, but through personal intervention.
They entered into various intercdurse with the race of men,
condescending even to most familiar intimacy with man or wo-
man. Furthermore, they suffered man to meddle with divine
affairs, permitting even accession to their own ranks from the
race of men. There was nothing mysterious for the Greek
about the ways of his deities. Their desires and powers were
not beyond human ken. They were the desires and powers of
a man-god.
The familiarity between the Greek and his gods has not bred
the proverbial contempt in the Grecian mind for his gods. The
relations were filial, affectionate. Thunder spoke to the Greek
of the presence of Zeus. In the morn he saw Diana, the Chaste
Huntress, and the morning aurora heralded to him the approach
of Phoebus Apollo, the god of light and wisdom. The sexual
or propagative passions were ruled by Venus, the radiant,
laughing goddess of propagation, and when these passions
found their object it meant that little Eros was around. Prome-
theus, the protector of the human race, shielded man from the
rapacity of the gods in a way that would meet the approval of
a modern sharper. Mercury, the god of merchants and thieves,
would shock the sentiment of a bourgeois by his disregard of
the sacredness of the private property of the gods.
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756 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
The chief characteristic of the religion of antique Greece was
its naturalness. Hence situations and myths that to a modern
mind appear absurd and full of ridicule of the gods, appeared
to the Greek in the order of divine things. What more pre-
posterous than the Thessalian legend of the genesis of the
Myrmidans? What an adventure for the Thunderer! Yet to
the Greek it was compatible with divine dignity. And it is this
simple faith and naturalness that precluded any element of vul-
garity in his religion. The religion of ancient Greece was a
merger of the religious sentiment of the Greek with his intense
love of nature. His mind dwelled with affection on the phe-
nomena of nature and followed with inquisitive wonder its pro-
cesses. Hence it was creative of the most exalted art and most
wonderful philosophy of the ancient or modern world.
Art, Science — A mind habituated to contemplate the divine
as merely human in perfect form, will naturally love to dwell
on the physical attributes of humanity in their perfect form.
A mind that enters daily into familiar relations with the divine
and shapes the divine into flesh and blood, will naturally seek
concrete, material expressions for its ideas of divine. Such
was the mind of the Greek of antiquity, and to this was due
tlie wondrous beauty of Greek art in sculpture and letters.
The code of morals of the Greek was simple as all other con-
ceptions of antiquity. Men could and did emulate the gods in
deeds of valor and prowess. All stratagems were legitimate
in war and love. The Homeric muse was not social. It was
not a muse of suffering but aspiring humanity. It was not a
muse of social ideals. It was a muse of heroic prowess and
heroic deeds. It was stern, sonorous and beautiful. It spoke
in accents full of awe of the wrath of Achilles balked in his de-
sires. He should have his desires gratified. It uttered thun-
ders in the track of Achilles furious and slaughtering the
Trojans.
Grecian statuary may be considered to represent either ma-
terialized divinity or men and women perfect in line and form.
Here the human and divine merge completely. But human or
divine, they are ever sublime in the stern harmony of their lines
and the calm beauty of their form. In fact the mind of the.
Greek may be said to have lacked utterly the faculty of the
base, the ignoble. It could create nothing that partook of the
ugly, the repulsive. Their Furies and Gorgonas, though ter-
rible, still retain the beautiful of terror.
The public buildings of Greece bore evidence to the serene
symmetry of everything conceived by the mind of the Greek.
There was nothing in the architecture of Greece calculated to
deceive the sense or depress the mind. The lines of the struc-
tures were rigorously severe in their simplicity. They were an
architectonic expression of the antique sense of harmony and
naturalness of all things simple and concrete.
X
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PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 757
It may appear to be a presumption to attempt discoursing on
the philosophy of Greece within the space of this article. But
it may be permissible to point out that the Grecian philosophic
systems bore evidence to the same fundamental disposition of
the Grecian mind. It approached the problems of creation and
being as if they were the mere handiwork of man. The work
of the gods differed from the work of man only in degree. At
the same time the mind of the Greek had not yet formed clear
conceptions of mysteries in nature beyond the sphere of in-
quiry. It was not yet hampered by the consciousness of its own
limitations. It boldly approached nature and read its riddles.
The Grecian physicists went on shaping one system of creation
after another — systems both preposterously childish and won-
derfully prophetic; systems which will forever arrest the gaze
and excite the wonder of mankind. The philosophy of Socrates
and of the philosophers following him were of a more social
and moral school. For society has matured and conditions de-
manded a rule of conduct for the individual and his relations to
the state. At this time Greece was brought through its com-
merce into frequent contact with the different civilizations of
Asia and Africa. From this period Grecian religion and thought
begin to evince the presence of adventitious elements. The
various dark mysteries introduced into the religious ceremon-
ies were certainly of exotic origin. Even philosophic thought
assumed the garb of the East. The exoteric school was a fea-
ture borrowed from the Orient. It was as if Greek mind has
eaten of the tree of consciousness, of self, and became suddenly
conscious and ashamed of its nakedness.
The two great systems of conception — antagonistic and irre-
concilable — met for the first time face to face. They were to
engage in a struggle that was to continue for many centuries.
The prize was the reign over the human mind. The system
that was of Greece had for itself one factor only — knowledge.
But imperceptibly weak was the desire for true knowledge in
the mass of mankind and many centuries passed before an
atom was added to its store. The system of the East had on
its side all the cowering timidity of man just emerging out of
barbarism and all his paralyzing terror before the great Un-
knowable.
CHRISTIANITY.
The hoary, dreamy Orient was the birthplace of mysticism, a
system of ideas which tends to wean the mind of man from the
material world and hold it in a state of ecstatic trance by the
terrors or beatitudes of the unknown or supernatural. These
Eastern ideas were bequeathed to Europe by the ancient civi-
lizations of Asia and Egypt. Its appearance in Europe ante-
dates Christianity. But its manifestations were weak and timid.
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768 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
It were as if the East waited, watching for art opportunity, and
as soon as conditions were favorable it invaded, in the form of
Christianity, all Europe. It adapted itself promptly to the
needs of the times. Evolving from its original purity of abso-
lute self-abnegation into a religious system, it compromised
with the European world for the purpose of conquering it. It
surrendered its extreme individualism, became a social creed
and filled a long-felt want in the religious cravings of the
masses. For Europe was being furrowed by a terrible plow
that was upsetting things which were thought to be of eternity
and unsettling ideas which were the inheritance of times im-
memorial. Countless hordes of terrible races emerged out of
the mountains of Uzria,out of the plains of Sarmatia,and hurled
themselves against the Roman Empire. The empire conquered
or absorbed the first comers, but fresh hordes took their place.
Rome had the advantage of arms and organization, but it had
none of the primitive vigor and hope of its antique days of
which the barbarians had a full measure. Like an elemental
force the Goths and the Huns swept Europe with sword and
torch, leaving their wake thick with corpses and cinders. The
general mind looked with awe to the calamitous forces which
human will was powerless either to arrest or to command. Man
saw war ravaging one part of the world and fearful plague and
famine devastating the other. The gods and the religions of
the olden times were found entirely wanting to meet new de-
mands. New social conditions ^rew too complex for the unso-
phisticated religions of the ancient Greece and Rome. Grad-
ually the idea that the course of events and the destiny of man
are presided over by causes that are supernatural and beyond
the sphere of man's comprehension gained a hold in the mind of
the masses. Mysticism — a belief in a supernatural cause — and
fatalism — a belief that all events happen by predestination —
took posesssion of the mind of man. The rapid spread of Chris-
tianity was assured.
The religion of paganism was natural and its theology par-
took of the character of an inquiry into the laws of nature. The
tenets of Christian religion are moral, founded on authority,
and exclude all inquiry. Paganism is materialistic in the prim-
itive sense of the word. Even the g^ods of paganism are ma-
terial beings. Christianity is essentially spiritual. It abhors
things of the world, for it brought not material but spiritual
salvation. It brought a mysterious message of boundless love
and eternal consolation to the oppressed and groaning millions.
It raised their drooping spirits into an ecstatic state, fit for
martyrdom. It opened before eyes that saw no hope in this
life, a vista of rapturous visions of the after-life, where "the
last shall be the first." ^ .
The fundamental precept of Christian theology is faith that
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PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 769
Questions not. God knows all things that were, are and will be.
le is everywhere. Not one hair falls without His cognizance.
His ways are dark, mysterious and beyond human comprehen-
sion. All inquiry is idle and forbidden. Jesus is the personifi-
cation of suffering, crucified humanity. His life symbolizes the
idea of humble submission, patient suffering for the glory of
the kingdom to come.
The idea of the East, in its metaphysical rigidity, contem-
plates complete annihilation of self as the state of perfection.
The social instinct of self-preservation finds a way of neutral-
izing the destructive logic of that principle. In the East it cre-
ated castes, alone privileged to uphold the purity of the doc-
trine. The lower castes, constituting the mass of the people,
were considered worthy of only worshiping the principle, with-
out realizing it. In Europe society was too mobile to be petri-
fied into castes. The church and the monastic orders were the
result of the compromise.
The influence of the Eastern spirit became manifest in the
whole life of society. It breathed on science and it became
petrified into scholasticism. It touched art and art shriveled
and shrank. Science and art would have languished and per-
ished under the withering breath of the East, if not for op-
posing influences. Only architecture, which always mirrors
truly the genius of the times, has found a new expression. On
the ruins of the temples of antiquity Christianity reared the
vast and massive forms of its cathedrals. Sombre and mys-
terious, they hid in their shadowy recesses altars to an unknow-
able and^ unfathomable deity. In their awful presence man con-
fessed his utter helplessness. They cowed the mind and de-
pressed the spirit. Standing guard on the threshold of the
Unknown, they bore a terrible warning to the bold trespasser.
The Christian cathedrals symbolized the idea of subordination
of the natural and rational to the mystic and unfathomable.
The architecture of the Moors — massive forms on slender col-
umns — bore evidence to the same spirit, a spirit at war with
nature, seeking for mysteries outside of its manifest laws, whose
regular operation it would seek to suspend. In architecture
the naturalness of paganism and the mysticism of Christianity
have found a concrete and lasting illustration.
The precepts of Christianity were designed for a society of
masters and slaves, of rich and poor, and they contemplate the
perpetuity of such a system. True Christianity would be im-
possible in a social system where none of the virtues of pa-
tience and submission on one side and generosity and mercy
on the other could be practiced. It precludes the idea of eco-
nomic equality. Hence its deprecation of material wealth and
welfare. Jesus was the man of patient suffering, and He be-
came the ideal to which Christians were enjoined to strive with-
out the hope of ever attaining it.
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760 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
Paganism aimed at the material gratification of man. The
cycle of real existence was completed in this World and it looked
with contempt on the shadowy hereafter. The great migration
of nations and the decline of the power of Rome resulted in
a decay of order and authority. The millions of mankind were
deprived of material welfare and personal security, and Chris-
tianity offered them what paganism denied — a moral satisfac-
tion. Out of the social chaos, a state approximating order was
formed. The restraining force of the new moral or supersti-
tious idea became a great cohesive factor in society. Chris-
tianity became dominant.
Paganism could not prevent the ascendancy of Christianity,
but it refused to be banished completely from the human mind.
It knew that Christianity was reared in and grew out of the
suffering of man and that equal material welfare of all would
be fatal to Christianity. It joined hands with the sensual and
intellectual in man, while Christianity became allied to the
moral and spiritual. Fear and abstinence stood at the side of
Christianity; knowledge and desire at the side of paganism.
The restraining and disciplining influence of Christianity and
the aspiring and enlightening influence of paganism met in con-
flict which continues to this day. Whole races disappeared in
the conflict ; the earth and the waters were redened with human
blood ; but the conflict is pregnant with a promise that mankind
will emerge out of the conflict with the savage instincts dis-
ciplined, the mind broadened and enlightened — a race fit for a
glorious destiny.
The triumphant church puts into the mouth of the dying
Jfulian the Stoic — the apostate, according to the church — the
ast words : "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean I" The holy
fathers saw in Julian the last formidable champion of pagan-
ism and with his death they saw paganism prostrate beneath the
shadow of the all-conquering cross. But the church never
attempted to carry out the doctrines of Christianity in all their
spiritual purity. For the sensual and intellectual cravings of
man could not be completely suppressed. Besides, the light
shed by Grecian civilization was too elusive and too all-pervad-
ing for mere measures of suppression. It has taken a firm hold
on the human mind, including the best minds among the fathers
of the church. We find the ideas of antiquity given theologic
authority in dogmatic form; even as the ruins of pagan tem-
ples furnished material for cathedrals and pagan rites wer*
given a Christian name and sanction. Rome has jp-own great
because it took into its bosom and admitted to citizenship the
conquered nations. This has decentralized the power of Rome
and became ultimately fatal to its supremacy. Pursuing a sim-
ilar course, Christianity has adopted antiquity into its bosom.
For the most stern of the holy fathers were still human. Their
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PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 7*1
influence on the formation of the church was in proportion to
the power of their minds and in the same proportion were they
fascinated by the wondrous heights to which Grecian genius
had soared. It may startle a present day Christian if we con-
fess our gratitude to the church for giving shelter to pagan-
ism in its trying hours. Paganism was sheltered and cultivated
in cloisters and monasteries. Some of the greatest pillars of
the church were good pagans. The multitudes that raged
against everything that bore to them a pagan aspect were often
kneeling before a pagan. A pagan is said to have occupied the
throne of St. Peter and the ecclesiastic university of Paris
treated dissenters from the theories of Aristotle as it treated
heretics. Christianity could not have become a dominant creed
without diluting or rather solidifying its spirituality with the
materialism of paganism. Paganism lent concrete forms and
a social aspect to the mystic and individualistic principle of
Christianity. It was due to paganism that the doctrines of the
humble and meek Carpenter of Nazareth became militant and
aggressive. It is to the element of paganism in its rites that
the church owes in no small degree its vitality. Protestantism
is a revolt against paganism in the rites of the church. But
the Protestant religions lose their vitality in proportion as they
eliminate paganism in their rituals and compromise with pa-
ganism in their principles. The ascendancy of rational over
moral ideas dates from the first great reformatory movements.
Protestantism attempted to compromise with reason and in this
attempt Christianity suffered its first defeat. It was a conces-
sion to reason. Protestantism substituted rationalization and
apology for shattered faith and authority. But reason cannot
be permanently placated by compromise. It was unfortunate
for the church that in all great conflicts for the betterment of
their conditions the people, as a rule, found it indifferent or
hostile to their interests. Besides that in temporal matters the
church could not do otherwise than reflect the views of the
dominant class, its basic principle was opposed to equal ma-
terial welfare of all. And for the same reason it set its face
against the growing aspirations of reason.
Every new aspiring idea must have its martyrs. Reason had
its martyrs. However, it emerged victorious out of every con-
flict with Christianity. New conditions in Europe favored such
victory. In the year 1453 the Turks captured Constantinople
and the overland route to India was closed to the trade of Eu-
rope. This compelled the Europeans to seek another route
to India. The unknown ocean lay before them and they dared
its dreaded deep for the passage. The Cape of Good Hope
was soon reached, America discovered, the Straits of Magel-
lan passed and the globe circumnavigated — all in the endeavor
to reach India. The discovery of new worlds acted like a
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763 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
blast of the bugle on the nations of Europe. The minds of
men were turned from the promised celestial felicity held out
to them by the church to the realization of their hopes in this
world. People by the thousands went out in quest of earthly
paradises, eldoradoes, fountains of youth and the main object —
gold. The imaginary terrors of the unknown regions were dis-
pelled. Reason, once aroused, will not rest satisfied with an
answer to the first inquiry. From the elevation to which it
crawled and creeped with slow pain and travail, it was attracted
by higher and still higher altitudes. Another factor which con-
tributed to the reawakening of reason was the migration of
many Greeks, learned in the Grecian .antiquities, from Constan-
tinople into Italy. They brought with them many ancient
manuscripts which are now treasured among the heirlooms of
our race. To these factors was due the revival of arts and sci-
ences known in history of Europe as the period of Renaissance.
The scope of this article is limited to a retrospective inquiry
into the causes of Christianity and paganism. Their manifes-
tation as social forces of our own time may constitute the sub-
ject of a separate article. But the inquiry would be fatally
aefective should I fail to point out their historical relation to the
most significant phenomenon of the present historical epoch —
the growing ascendancy of democracy. For causes into which
it is not my present object to inquire, the masses of the people
show now a marked determination of taking an interest in the
political affairs and will not rest contented with being watched
over by all sorts of "shepherds." This propensity of the people
to attend to their own business is not of recent origin. Casting
a glance through the receding centuries, we notice several ten-
dencies, different in their origin, which converging are found
to have co-operated to bring about the same result — the
democratization of Europe.
It was stated before that the religion and early philosophy
of Greece were characteristic of a social state to which the
problems of a more mature and complex society were as yet
unknown. Grecian philosophy did not rise above the general
recognition of slavery as a proper condition for some men. The
times were not ripe for a moral revolt against a condition gen-
erally regarded as quite in the order of things. However, signs
of such revolt were not wanting in the later period. The stoics
put forth the theory of equality of all men in the natural state.
The doctrine of equal natural rights followed in the steps of
the theory. That this theory was in accord with the vague
aspirations of mankind has been amply proven by the tenacious
vitality displayed by it through long ages and many vicissi-
tudes. It has gained the most prominent place among the
teachings of the age. We find it later a part of Roman juris-
prudence and elevated to a doctrine of international law in the
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PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 7«8
Jus Gentium of the Romans. Mankind owes no small debt of
gratitude to this living theory of the stoics. In princely or beg-
garly guise, in the dry discourse of the scholar or sonorous
rhymes of the poet, it continued to speak to reason or charm
the imagination of man. It was sung, as a fable of the golden
age, by minstrels and bards in the halls of tyrants. Like a
vein of gold it glowed through the romances of the middle
ages, and Cervantes dwelt lovingly on the fable. Till it burst
into a storm in the passionate, burning words of Rousseau, and
finally attained its crowning glory in forming the central
thought of the Declaration of Independence of the United
States.
In the evolution of the idea of equality of all men, other fac-
tors, equal if not superior to the theory of a natural state, must
be recognized. The Teutons owed their indomitable spirit of
freedom and equality neither to Christian religion nor Grecian
philosophy. Still the far-reaching influence of Teutonic char-
acter and institutions on the progress of Europe and of Eng-
land in particular, cannot be gainsaid.
The rational spirit of the age of reformation has effected
many remarkable compromises between reason and habit or
superstition. As Christianity compromised with paganism by
assuming its garb, so has now reason placated faith. It has
given to the gross, material ideas of the day a theologic guise
and authority. The stoics elevated all men to an equally high
state ; the Christian doctrine reduced all men to an equally low
level. Man, and it matters not how exalted his station in this
world might have been, stood naked and bereft of all his earthly
glories in the tyts of his Creator. The Christian church applied
this doctrine only to the state of man in the hereafter. But
rebellious spirits seized upon it and made it serve their pur-
pose. For man will endeavor to spell out in the venerated
writings of his ancient teachers an articulate expression for his
present-day needs. With the invention of the art of printing
and the translation of the Bible into native languages, this doc-
trine began to stir the popular mind. For it found that the hope
which it dared not to utter stood plainly writ in the words of the
gospel, that one man is as good as any other before the judg-
ment seat of the Lord. Hence we find that the movements of
reformation were closely connected with the political move-
ments of the day. In England this is especially noticeable.
The Lollards and the Puritans hardly knew where their relig-
ion ended and their politics began. A similar phenomenon is
now observed in Russia. The Russian government regards the
various dissenting sects as dangerous to the established gov-
ernment. For in whatever else the sectarians may differ, they
generally agree in refusing, openly or secretly, allegiance to
the government of the Czar.
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W4 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
Man's spirit was for so many centuries hovering in theologi-
cal clouds, singing "Hossana!" steeped in raptures not of this
world ; it was so long wandering in smoky regions in company
of damned souls, that when the reaction to a natural state set
in it was both marked and strong. In vain did monk and priest
chant their incantations. In vain did the holy inquisition light
its auto-de-fe. Europe, for centuries in a lethargic state of
suspended animation, was aroused to the full possession of all
its earthly faculties and desires. Men became possessed by the
lusty cravings for the joys of life, physical and intellectual. It
required a strong effort on his part not only to sweep from his
sight the theological cobwebs through which the world ap-
peared to him as a lurid phantasmagoria, but also to shatter
the shackles of feudalism. But all this was effected. Europe
was ushered into the capitalistic state and is being now pro-
jected through it with accelerated motion. Society casts its
old shell. All the cohesive forces, the social bands of yore,
are now growing as dry as the ligaments of the mummies and
are being blown to dust by the rush of new winds. Christianity
has served its purpose as a social factor. It is steadily grow-
ing less so. In vain do well-meaning persons raise the image
of crucified Christ. The mass of mankind stops for a moment
out of mere habit to sigh over its sins and express good na-
turedly a sympathy for the suffering of Christ. The mass will
pause even long enough to administer a sound thrashing to
the descendants of the alleged tormentors of Christ and thus
atone and do penance for its own sins; but the intervals be-
tween the pauses are ever growing longer, the pauses are ever
growing shorter. For the times surge angrily around the lag-
gards. The wave of progress rises higher and sweeps onward.
Onward 1
Julian.
[The July number of The International Socialist Review will
contain a reply to this article by J. Stitt Wilson, of the Social
Crusade. — Ed.]
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The Monppoly of Intellect
N an article entitled "A Study of British Genius" pub-
lished in the Popular Science Monthly for March,
Mr. Havelock Ellis sums up his view of the sub-
ject with the following statement:
"When we survey the field of investigation I have here very
briefly summarized, the most striking fact we encounter is the
extraordinary extent to which British men and women of
genius have been produced by the highest and smallest social
classes, and the minute part which has been played by the
'teeming masses' in "building up British civilization. This is
not altogether an unexpected result, though it has not before
been shown to hold good for the entire field of the intellectual
ability of a country As we descend the social pyramid,
although we are dealing with an ever vaster mass of human
material, the appearance of any individual of eminent ability
becomes an ever rarer phenomenon, while the eminent per-
sons belonging to the lowest and most numerous class of all
are, numerically, at all events, an almost negligible quantity."
These facts are certainly striking enough, but there is noth-
ing at all remarkable about them, and the author himself ad-
mits that the result was not altogether unexpected. The
truth is, it would be folly to expect anything else when we
consider the conditions to which the "teeming masses" who
are said to have played such "a minute part in building up
British civilization" are subjected, and have been subjected
for generations. Intellectual achievement is a matter of op-
portunity as well as of ability and requires a reasonable amount
of leisure and well-being for success. Imagine a street rail-
way conductor working eighteen hours a day and actually not
seeing enough of his own children to know them by sight,
producing a work of genius! Imagine the factory girl work-
ing twelve hours a day at less than 4 cents an hour, and doing
her own cooking and washing and housework into the bar-
gain, giving birth to a great creation of art ! Imagine Shakes-
peare set to driving a nail machine at twelve years of age;
Where would Hamlet's soliloquy be? Imagine Mr. Havelock
Ellis himself delving in a coal mine from the time he was old
enough to handle a pick; how much of eminent ability would
he have contributed to the sum total of British genius ?
It is this cutting off of the great mass of the people from
all participation in and contribution to the higher aims of life —
this monopoly of intellectual activity by a small leisured class,
?tt
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766 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
that it is one of the grand functions of socialism to remedy.
More than the equalization of wages, more than the stoppage
of competitive waste, more than any mere physical and ma-
terial good, is to be desired the equalization of opportunity for
all to enter into and live up to the highest moral and intel-
lectual ideal of which they are capable. To take the lowest
view of the matter, the mere economic loss to society from
this wilful shutting out of the rank and file of its members
from their share in the building up of civilization is incalcula-
ble; greater even than that suffered by the unjust appropria-
tion of public utilities by private greed. When we think of the
enormous strides that have been made under a system which
practically restricts the intellectual work of advancing our civ-
ilization to the small per cent of the population embraced in
the upper and middle classes, we may well ask, what might not
have been accomplished if all the seething multitudes at the
base of the social pyramid had been in a position to contribute
their latent capacities to the general store of knowledge! If,
instead of having their powers dwarfed and stunted and per-
verted by unnatural conditions, they had been allowed the in-
herent birthright of every human being to develop whatever
powers nature has given him, the wilaest dreams of science
might to-day be realized, and the twentieth century would be
as far ahead of itself as it is ahead of the tenth.
Education alone is not going to help matters. Mr. Ellis
informs us that his investigations have not shown "any sign
that the education of the proletariat will lead to a new devel-
opment of eminent men; the lowest class in Great Britain, so
far as the data before us show, has not exhibited any recent
tendency to a higher yield of genius."
Assuredly not, and it would be foolish to expect anything
else so long as the proletariat remains a proletariat. It is not
educating the proletariat that is going to mend matters, but
getting rid of it. To educate men and then shut them out of
the intellectual life and set them to working for eighteen hours
a day in a sweat-shop, is not only a foolish economic waste,
but a refinement of cruelty worthy the blackest ages of the
world's history. It is not education alone that socialism claims
for the proletariat, but industrial freedom. Educating a man
can profit him nothing so long as he is a slave; it can only
make him conscious of his misery. A certain amount of well-
being and leisure from the ceaseless grind of toil is absolutely
necessary for the moral and intellectual life of any intelligent
creature. It is not because the proletariat is made of differ-
ent or meaner stuff than the rest of us, forsooth, that they are
to be regarded as a "negligible quantity" in the production of
genius. The poet knew better than that —
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THE MONOPOL Y OF INTELLECT 767
"Chill penury repressed their noble rage
And froze the genial current of the soul/'
It does not take a poet or a philosopher, however, to tell
us this truth. Every common-school teacher knows the chill-
ing' effect of our brutal system of child labor upon the moral
and intellectual development of the poor. Here is the testi-
mony of the principal of a grammar school in one of the labor
quarters of a large manufacturing town:
"I have seen but little difference in the mentality of the rich
and poor. Some of the brightest children I have ever taught
have been from the poorer classes ; some of the stupidest from
the richer I should say, however, that I have very few
factory children in my school. The avarice of the mill owners
and the ignorance of the children's parents have thrown the
better part of their lives along with the raw cotton to be ground
out in the mills I heard one of our large mill owners
laugh the other day and say the Southern mills would get the
best of the Northern mills by reason of the longer day — our
ten-hour day — they running their mills, by law, only eight."
If any flickering spark of genius shows itself among these
slaves of toil it is quickly snuffed out in the dust of, the factory
or the gloom of the sweat-shop. There is a melancholy sug-
gestiveness in those rare instances of budding genius from the
ranks of the poor that sometimes make their way into the lower
grades of the common schools for a few weeks, and then dis-
appear to be heard of no more — all their higher capabilities
crushed and ground out of them under the iron wheels of a
civilization to which we are told that the proletariat have con-
tributed nothing I Is it nothing to have contributed their
blood, their life, their souls — nay, the life and the souls of their:
children? Verily, there must be something radically wrong
with a civilization that exacts from the vast mass of its human
material such a tribute as this!
That the conditions aimed at by socialism are precisely the
ones to remedy this state of things is made clear on Mr. Ellis'
own showing. "The minor aristocracy," he tells us, " 'the gen-
tlemen of England,' living on the soil in the open air, in a life
of independence at once laborious and leisurely' (the italics are
mine) "have been able to give their children good opportuni-
ties for development, while at the same time they have not been
able to dispense them from the necessity of work"
Now, this is just the condition that socialism is seeking to
make universal — a condition which, while dispensing none
from the necessity of labor, would leave to all sufficient leisure
for the full development of their faculties, be these great or
small. It recognizes that work and leisure are both good, the
one a universal duty, the other a universal privilege — not a
-oyal prerogative inherent by right divine in any particular
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768 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
class, but a privilege to be earned by labor and therefore not
to be lightly trifled away, but devoted to high and noble pur-
poses. Idleness is a usurper that rides upon the back of labor
and can only exist when that patient beast of burden is over-
worked for its support. Idleness and overwork are both bad,
and our modern system by which the world is divided into two
classes — the idlers and the drudges — is eminently calculated
to reduce both to the minimum of social efficiency, leaving the
small residuum whom a happy chance has placed in a position
of "independence at once laborious and leisurely" to furnish
the bulk of the intellectual power of the world.
The enormous waste of the intellectual potentialities of the
race through this narrow monopoly of intellectual opportunity
by the "classes" is unparalleled, even by the economic waste
that runs riot in our senseless competitive industrial system.
No more striking illustration could be found of the blind way
in which humanity has groped its way to light than the fact
that we should have clung so long to wasteful competitive
methods in our industrial affairs, where every law of economics
calls for the closest combination and co-operation, while in
the field of intellectual effort, where the widest and freest com-
petition ought to prevail, we have the closest of all monopo-
lies, confined practically, as Mr. Ellis informs us, to "the high-
est and smallest social classes."
I forbear further comment. A social system based on such
anomalies must stand self-condemned in the eyes of all think-
ing people.
Miss E. F. Andrews.
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Some Misconceptions of Marx
HERE is a great similarity between the growth of a
movement and the life of a man. Each has its birth,
growth, maturity, decline and death; and the phe-
nomena of one process are the phenomena of the
other. Man has his hot and eager youth; a religion, or phi-
losophy, passes through a period of wild fanaticism ; and both,
as they approach the calm, and comparative wisdom of matur-
ity, alter, or altogether reject, many of the most cherished
ideals of earlier days. The old man is the Philistine of the
youth, the sage is anathama marantha to the dogmatist. Then
again, a young man is apt to be a hero worshiper, choosing,
according to his temperament, a Napoleon or a Rousseau for
his ideal man; while a movement is originated by and concen-
trates around the personality of some strong man. As time
goes by, and distance exercises its hallowing effects, the
utterances of this man gain authority out of all proportion to
their merits. He becomes a prophet, or is elevated to the Val-
halla of the gods. He gathers to himself the accretions o!
knowledge of succeeding generations and, eventually, many
things are said and done in his name which he would have disa-
vowed — nay! which would have greatly scandalized him.
In general, the socialist philosophy has conformed to these
laws of growth. While it may not have originated with Marx,
his is the most commanding figure in the socialist pantheon.
His teachings have exercised a tremendous influence upon the
movement, its propaganda is conducted on lines laid down by
him. He is the great authority, and like all authorities, he
has suffered at the hands of posterity. Here, in the United
States, disunion and strife resulted from the misreading and
violation of his tactics; and, as always happens when people
take the truth from other mouths, numerous distortions and
misconceptions of his philosophy are afloat. Some of the
things said in his name are really enough to make the philos-
opher stir in his grave.
Perhaps the doctrine of surplus value, and the deductions
from it, have undergone the most mutilation. This, one of the
cardinal tenets of Marxism, teaches :
(i) That labor produces all wealth and creates all exchange
values.
(2) That the amount of labor socially necessary to produce a
commodity decides its exchange value.
(3) That the producers of a nation are its consumers; and
7G9
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770 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
that a community which lives by the production and exchange
of commodities must, if industry is to continue uninterrupted,
balance production and consumption.
(4) That in capitalist society, no such balance exists. Pro-
ducers do not receive in wages the equivalent of their product,
and that, accordingly, a surplus product is left in the hands of
the capitalist.
(§) That accumulations of such products and their financial
equivalents glut markets, cause industrial depressions and hard
times.
Now the most orthodox economist would scacely object to
the doctrine or surplus value as outlined above, though it con-
tains dynamite enough to shatter capitalist society, Dut some
of the arguments based upon it deservedly invite his ridicule
and scorn. Students of Marx will notice with what care he
avoids setting time limits to the social processes of which he
treats. Would that all our contemporaries had exercised like
discretion! For those errors in the popular conceptions of
surplus value which are not founded on quantity are founded on
time. The line of reasoning pursued by these false prophets of
socialism runs somewhat as follows:
The organization of industry, in modern society, has gath-
ered thousands of working men into mills and factories, where,
aided by ingenious machinery, they produce enormous quan-
tities of commodities. In exchange for their labor they receive
but a small portion of the values created, and thus is brought
Into existence a surplus product for which no home market
can be found. The competition of all nations for foreign mar-
kets, and an eventual transformation of customers into com-
petitors, causes a like glutting of the world's market, when
the commercial crises takes on an international character and
business depressions become universal. Society suffers from
overproduction and men starve in the midst of the plenty they
have ^ created. During these depressions socialist propaganda
flourishes. Its organizers look upon the commercial crisis as
a kind of social cathartic, somewhat drastic in its action, per-
haps, but wonderfully efficient in removing the stagnation (A
Ideas from which the wage-earner habitually suffers.
The surplus product having, in the course of time, dribble*
away through many channels, the mills, mines and factories
start up in full blast, and all lines of business display renewed
activity. Manufacturers produce faster than ever, and the social
machine rushes ahead with increasing speed very much after
the fashion of an engine which has slipped its governors. Lost
time must be made up, future dull periods provided against.
And so the next crisis comes a little earlier than the last. From
these facts the prophet is led to predict the arrival of a per-
petual crisis, chronic hard times, and the breakdown of the
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SOME MISCONCEPTIONS OF MARX 771
system. Then he expects the pinch of poverty to produce to
the wage-earner an unusual exhibition of mental activity. So-
cialist majorities will be returned to all legislative bodies, and
finally, the co-operative commonwealth will be ushered in.
Now there is nothing radically wrong in this line of reason-
ing, except, perhaps, it is a little too sweeping and catastrophic,
but when the reasoner descends from the general to the par-
ticular, and begins to set forth a time limit, he makes a great
mistake. The people do not forget his past utterances. Elec-
tion after election they go to the polls without seeing the
sweeping socialist victories which were promised within a cer-
tain time. They awaken, as if from a dream, to find the old
landmarks still in existence. The system has not yet collapsed*
In spite of all the contradictions so much in evidence, the peo-
ple are still eating and drinking, marrying and burying. The
wicked capitalist, fat and comfortable as of yore, manages to
keep the social pot a-boiling' after some fashion, and they are
somewhat chary about trying experiments in housekeeping
with those whose ability to perform this necessary function has
not been put to the test. As the years roll by actual contact
with the realities of life forces them to materially alter their
views of things. They make a qualification here and a modifi-
cation there until the blood-red wine of their revolutionary
spirit is very much diluted, and their faith in socialist teaching
badly shaken..
Now these exaggerations and errors in time are based partly
on unreliable estimates of the amount of surplus value accruing
to the capitalist, and partly due to failure to consider many
qualifying factors. The estimates of the relative shares received
by capital and labor in the final division of their joint product
vary greatly. The more conservative socialist writers adopt
the figures of the United States Census Report, which assigns
to labor 45 per cent of the product ; but the socialist writer who
is not conservative gives to labor anywhere between 10 and
22 per cent. The remaining 80 or 90 per cent being classed as
surplus value and credited to the account of the capitalist.
These truly amazing results are obtained in the following
manner: The statistician divided $2,270 (the gross per capita
production of labor for one year in the United States) by 227
(the average number of ^working days). As a result of the cal-
culation he obtains $10 as the average daily per capita produc-
tion of labor. From this he subtracts $1.15, the average daily
wage of the American worker. "Now," he says, "the Amer-
ican laborer produces ten dollars a day, he receives, roughly
speaking, in wages, one dollar— consequently he is in receipt
of just 10 per cent of his product. The modest statistician
rests content with this, under the full conviction that he has
made out a good case for the cause, but those of his fellows
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772 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
who are not modest carry the line of reasoning a little farther
and proceed to show that the share received by labor is still
smaller.
They argue that since these calculations are based on whole-
sale prices and the laborer buys at retail, the difference be-
tween the two rates must be deducted from the share of labor
and added to that of capital. A claim which is manifestly
absurd. The cost of distribution amounts on the average to
at least 25 per cent of the total value of a commodity, and how
25 per cent is to be deducted from the laborer's 10 per cent
the statisticians fail to say. The difference between wholesale
and retail price is a necessary charge made to cover the cost of
distribution and is borne by society as a whole. The com-
pleted commodity of the manufacturer is the raw material of
the distributer ; the exchanges effected between wholesaler and
retailer, and retailer and customer, are analagous to the oper-
ations of the manufacturer, and the profits accruing from such
exchanges are shared by the labor and capital employed in
distributive enterprise, at the same ratio of forty-five to fifty-
five. Whatever reflections may be cast on a system which re-
quires so many middlemen, so long as that system continues,
their charges constitute a legitimate item in the cost of dis-
tribution. The surplus values remaining in the hands of the
great jobbers of course may be deducted from the share of,
not only the labor in their employ, but of all labor, but it is
very much to be doubted whether it would lessen labor's aver-
age receipts by the one-hundredth portion of one mill.
The mistake in calculating the percentage of the product
received by labor may easily be detected. The $2,270 per cap-
ita of the production of wealth is the gross manufactured pro-
duct and represents not only the values created by the capitalist
and his workmen, but also values not created by them. It in-
cludes the cost of raw material. With this necessary charge
deducted, $1,000 is left as the value added to the raw material
by each particular manufacturing operation. Of this added
value, $445 goes to labor, $555 to capital. They thus receive
respectively 45 and 55 per cent of the values they have added
to the raw material.
It must not, however, be suposed that the 45 per cent accru-
ing to capital is net profit. A number of charges must be made
against it before the real surplus value is found. The follow-
ing figures, taken from the Report of tftie Massachusetts Bu-
reau of Labor, 1890, p. 319, and which were compiled from the
books of 731 manufacturing establishments of that state, con-
vey a clear idea of the distribution of values between capital
and labor. The figures are for one hundred dollars worth of
commodities sold at actual prices ruling on the markets:
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SOME MISCONCEPTIONS OF MARX 773
Cost of raw material $58.91
Superintendence 1.73
Wages 82.84
Rent 78
Insurance 88
Taxes 56
Freight 1.97
New equipment 24
Other expenses 18
Repairs 81
Net profits 19.96
Total $100.03
An analysis of this report shows that of each one hundred
dollars which the finished product brought on the market,
$58.91 represented the cost of raw material. Labor received
in wages $22.34. Five dollars and eighty cents were re-
quired to cover necessary expenses, and $12.95 represented the
net profit. In other words, labor received nearly 55 per cent
of the added value, capital a little over 31 per cent, and the
remaining 14 per cent was consumed by the expenses attend-
ant on running the business.
The following figures, taken from the Report of the Bureau
Df Labor of Connecticut, 1891, p. 23, give labor a still larger
percentage of its product :
Wages $89,508,000
Rent, Interest and taxes $ 8,177,000
Superintendence 5,M0,000
Net profits , 18,710,000
Total $22,098,000
Thus in Connecticut, labor received the large amount of
63^ per cent of its product. Capital received 22 per cent, and
the necessary expense consumed the remaining 1^/2 per cent.
The statistics of tlhe manufacturing industries of Pennsylvania
give similar results to those of Massachusetts.
It would thus seem as though the net profits realized in the
manufacturing industries of the United States do not exceed
31 per cent, and this is about the figure favored by the best
authorities. But it must be borne in mind that in this inves-
tigation we are not trying particularly to find out what is the
net profit, but rather, to discover what surplus product or its
equivalent surplus value remains in the hands of the capitalist
in any one year, after the consuming power of the community
has been exercised to the uttermost. We are looking for the
motor power which is to drive society to socialism.
So far, surplus product and surplus value have been used in
this article almost interchangeably and to prevent misunder-
standing it would be well to define clearly what is to be under-
stood by either term. The surplus product is to be here un-
derstood as referring to that portion of the joint product of
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774 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
capital and labor which is left on the market after thfe full pur-
chasing power of the community has been exercised ; the com-
modities which do not find purchasers because of the inability
of the producer to buy back his product. Surplus value, on the
other hand, is to be understood as the realized value — it may
be in monetary form — of that portion of the joint product of
capital and labor which is left in the hands of the capitalist after
wages and the expense of the industrial operations are paid.
And though the surplus product is really the material form of
surplus value, great differences exist between the two. The
one is evanescent, the other is permanent. The surplus product
quickly disappears, but surplus value remains to be re-mvested
in productive enterprise and bring into existence other surplus
values. Long after the surplus product has vanished into its
constituent gases, the values which it created go on accumulat-
ing. And these values, piling up on the financial markets of the
world, were until the year 1898 threatening a complete con-
gestion of capital.
But these surplus values in the hands of the capitalist un-
dergo further diminution and there are many channels through
which they percolate back to society. The bankruptcy laws
materially assist in the process. A merchant buys goods on
credit, is unable to meet his bills, files a petition of insolvency,
or makes a settlement with liis creditors. In either case the
result is the same. He has obtained something for nothing,
and surplus values are reduced to the extent of his defalcations.
Again, a portion of the surplus is consumed by a class the mem-
bers of which are neither producers nor distributers — lawyers,
doctors, actors, artists, clergymen, authors, personal servants,
and a host of others who minister to the wants of those who
have money to spend. The capitalist himself is a great consumer
and lives far beyond the modest fourteen hundred a year
allotted to him as a superintendent of industry. Once more,
under the head of taxes, comes all the expense of carrying on a
government, but all the revenue of government is not derived
by direct taxation. A large sum is annually raised by imposts
on exports and imports. Now when it comes to a question of
the consuming power of the nation, it must be remembered
that all the public servants paid out of revenues so raised be-
come users of the surplus products of the manufacturer. Then
a portion of the surplus is wasted, and must be charged to
profit and loss. Perishable goods which do not find ready sale
spoil and are removed from the market. The changing of the
modes has to be considered. Goods which are out of fashion
are usually sold below the cost of production, and in this case
at least the laborer's wage buys more than his product. Nor
should the enormous sums spent in war be forgotten. By the
issue of bonds England raised millions to cover the expense
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SOME MISCONCEPTIONS OF MARX 775
of her South African war. By so doing, at one and the same
time she found employment for large blocks of idle capital, re-
lieved the congestion of the financial markets of the world, and
consumed large quantities of surplus products. When that un-
happy war shall have reached its termination the chains of the
British wage slave as well as those of the Boer farmer will have
been drawn a little tighter. Thus, in one hundred ways, is the
surplus disposed of and the business of society enabled to go
on. In a higgildy-piggildy manner, to be sure, calculated to
make the gods weep with excessive laughter, but nevertheless
— goes on.
The conclusions reached may be verified by other evidence.
When it is remembered that an annual surplus product of io
per cent would in ten years pile on the markets of the world the
entire product of one year, the impossibility of the statistics
criticised in this article will easily be seen. The commercial
crisis comes at periods of about twelve years apart. Now in
1893, possibly, from a commercial standpoint, one of the black-
est years the United States ever saw, at no period of the year
were more than 1,250,000 workingmen out of employment at one
time. In other words, at no time was more than one-twentieth
of the working force idle. Though surplus commodities and
surplus values had been piling up for ten years, nineteen men
out of twenty were busily engaged in creating more. Facts
like these compel the conclusion that the surplus product which
causes the glutting of markets and hard times is very much
smaller than is generally supposed. Perhaps not more than 3
per cent of the total product of any one year.
At the first glance it would seem that such an apparently
small factor could hardly affect the economic equlibrium of
society, yet small causes sometimes produce great effects, and
this particular cause is quite large enough to bring about the
changes socialists desire. Surplus values are piling up on the
financial markets of the world, and were, until the year 1898,
threatening a complete congestion of capital. At the present
time $5,000,000,000 of saved capital is on deposit in the savings
banks of the United States and Europe, and the owners of this
ever-increasing mass of potential productivity are scouring the
earth for opportunities of investment. In 1899, 6,648,483,960
francs were invested in new securities, and yet, like a profes-
sional mendicant, capital goes a-begging. The British war
loan was subscribed twice over within twelve hours of the open-
ing of the lists, New York alone offering more than the total
sum required. ^ When the Greek war loan was floated in Paris
the sum required was subscribed twenty-three times over in
twenty-four hours, and ten times the amount of the loan was
actually deposited, on account, in thfe Bank of France. Ameri-
can bonds were lately refunded at the extremely low rate of
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770 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
interest of 2j/£ per cent, and the rate of interest on blocks of
capital has for many years been constantly falling. Indeed if
it had not been that in 1897 Western capital found employment
in the development of the Orient, complete congestion must
have resulted. In that year, the Populist millenium, when in-
terest shall no longer be, was very close at hand.
It is not necessary to dwell on the many factors which are
busily engaged in reducing surplus values. They are numer-
ous — wars, the development of foreign countries, wildcat finan-
ciering, etc. It is sufficient to know that surplus values accu-
mulate faster than they waste away. Laying aside the extrav-
agant estimates against which this article protests, the socialist
may justly claim that surplus value is now a powerful factor in
bringing about the social changes he desires and that in the
future it will be even more so.
The second serious misconception of the Marxian theory of
value springs from the confusion of ideas as to the meanings of
the terms exchange value and price. It is almost pathetic to
watch the efforts of an earnest and well-meaning socialist when
he attempts to prove that the price of every article exchanged
on a modern market is determined by the quantity of labor
which produced it. It cannot be done! The Marxian law of
exchange is a social law applying to an aggregate of social
transactions and intended to form the basis of exchange in t
society where all transactions shall be entirely social in charac-
ter. Under existing conditions this law can apply only to aver-
ages, and every attempt to make it cover all individual cases is
bound to result in failure.
For instance: In 1871, a certain department in France har-
vested an unusually short crop of the grapes from which the
Bergundy wine is made. Consequently the labor expended in
tilling the vineyard and making the wine was high in propor-
tion to the total product. In 1872, the same department har-
vested an unusually heavy crop and the labor expended was
small in proportion to the product. Yet the wine of '72 pro-
duced by little labor was worth about twice as much as the
wine of '71 produced by much labor ! A paradox if we apply
literally the Marxian law of exchange to individual cases, but
no paradox if we apply it as he intended it to be applied ! He
says himself that labor gives exchange value (i. e., makes them
exchangeable) to all commodities, but, that in capitalist society
the "price" is fixed by the "higgling of the market." The in-
stance cited above, one of many, shows the folly of^ applying
a general law to a particular case. Of course the wine of f 72
was superior in quality to the wine of '71, but nevertheless the
difference in quality renders it unclassifiable by the labor the-
ory. But if the wine production of that department be taken,
say, for a decade, and the law applied to a course of commodities,
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SOME MISCONCEPTIONS OF MARX 777
to an average, it will be found to work out with mathematical
correctness.
The erratic thought and eroneous statistics criticised above
are merely specimens selected from a mass of exaggerations,
misrepresentations and crazy figuring which has passed current
in socialist circles for sound thought. The sooner it is weeded
out and the truth separated from the false, the better ! If social
Ism is true it need not fear the truth. Why, then, hesitate to
expose falsehood and error? Be sure of one thing. If the
great mass of the people to whom we look for votes are not
possessed of high intellectual powers ; if they are not capable
of following our journeying^ into the realms of abstruse
thought; if they are dull and stupid, as we in our haste are
sometimes tempted to believe ; if they do not understand eco-
nomics, and dislike the study of sociology, yet nevertheless they
are possessed of a large measure of common sense, and try
your deductions and inductions by the only standard they know
— comparison with the things of life. If your theories har-
monize with these they accept them ; if not —
Let us bring our theories into harmony with observed facts !
Herman Whitaker.
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Summing Up
HENEVER a discussion assumes the character of a
personal controversy, it is the privilege of the open-
ing party to have the closing argument. I shall not
abuse this privilege, as I think that the main issue has
been entirely ignored in the argument, and the discussion has
been sidetracked to such general questions as "evolution and
revolution," "mind and socialism," etc., which bear no more
on the trust question than on any other of the many economic
questions of the day. As the substance of the replication of
necessity depends upon the contents of the answer, I leave
it to the unbiased reader to place the blame where it belongs,
for shifting the issues.
My main proposition, advanced in my first article, "Truste
and Socialism," was, that trusts will be spontaneously trans-
formed into state socialism by the efforts of the capitalist class
itself, stimulated by the antagonism between "producers" and
"consumers" within the capitalist class. The terms "producer"
and "consumer" are applied, throughout both articles, in the
sense accepted by political economy, which describes a capital-
ist manufacturer as a "producer," and a capitalist buyer of
coal and ore for use in his factory, as a "consumer" of those
articles, (a)
As far as I am aware, my article on "Trusts and Socialism"
is the first attempt to outline the transition from private cap-
italism to "state capitalism" or "state socialism," as a purely
economic process of evolution. My adversary bears me out
in this claim when he says :
"Tha( neither Marx, nor any eminent class-conscious social-
ist after him ever shared Marxist's fatalistic view of the grow-
ing of society into socialism as the outcome of purely economic
development.", (p. 630.)
This is the main point, for in a democracy the transition
from "state socialism" to "democratic socialism" (using the
terms in their popular meaning, without further analysis),
means but a change of public policy, whereas the change from
private capitalism to public capitalism has the appearance of
forcible expropriation. From the standpoint of "common
sense" the idea that the "vested interests" will placidly acqui-
esce in this expropriation, is too absurd to be seriously enter-
(a) Karl Marx, in Part II. of his "Capital/ 1 classifies all consumption as productive
consumption and personal consumption; the several subdivisions or the capitalist < "
are spoken of as "consuming" raw materials and other means of production.
778
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SUMMING UP 779
tained for a moment. I have, on the contrary, endeavored to
show, by following up the growth of the trusts, how "state
capitalism" must develop through the gradual expansion of
the scope of the state in the adjustment of the conflicting in-
terests of private corporations.
In reading both articles of my adversary I do not find a single
argument to disprove any of the propositions stated. All he
says is that state socialism is a bad thing (so is capitalism) and
that he and his comrades will see to it that there shall be none
of it, if they can help (so do the Russian Utopian socialists,
the Narodniki, assert that they will see to it that Russia shall
skip capitalism and jump directly into socialism).
Until some argument is brought forward to show the error
of my conception of the economic tendencies of the trust, I
mav rest on my original contention.
Another material issue raised in the discussion is the "class-
struggle" — that favorite exorcism whose meaning is often
shrouded in deep mystery for most of those who conjure with
it. I have shown the evolution of the class-struggle, from a
mere conflict of private interests to an issue between capital,
organized as a class, and labor, organized as a class. The dis-
pute over hours and wages tends to broaden into one over: the
share of labor in the national product.
In my conception the "class-struggle" does not lead to the
organization of industry on the basis of "public ownership" —
to effect that is the historical function of the capitalist The
mission of the "class struggle" is to transform "state capital-
ism," alias "state socialism," into "democratic socialism."
This is a plain statement. My adversary has not an argu-
ment to refute it ; he contents himself with quoting authorities
to show that nobody thinks as I do. What of it? Is the re-
search of scientific truth to be bound by "precedent" ?
Unluckily, the "authorities" are not all on one side — see
contra: the Kautsky resolution. The adverse "opinion" is there-
fore "distinguished" on the ground that it may be all right in
Europe, but it can have no application in America. The argu-
ment sounds familiar and credit must, in all fairness, be given
to the first source. It originated in the historical debate over
the novel theory of finance that "workingmen are not taxpay-
ers." The negative relied upon the platforms of nearly all the
European socialist parties, to which the affirmative replied that
since the party publication wherein the question was raised was
issued within the jurisdiction of the state of New York, it was
bound in its views on economic theory by the New York state
platform, and not by the platform of the Timbuctoo socialist
party.
While the distinction made by my adversary is thus sup-
ported by "authority," and by an American authority at that,
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780 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
yet it is here submitted that it is not applicable to the Kautsky
resolution, since the latter was adopted at an international con-
gress, at which the United States was represented by two dele-
gations, one of which, led by the vice-presidential nominee of
the Social Democratic party, voted in favor of the resolution.
It is noteworthy that while thus discarding the latest author-
ity of an international congress, on the ground that it does not
extend beyond the territorial boundaries of "Timbuctoo," my
adversary quotes with approval an earlier "Timbuctoo" au-
thority of a more limited jurisdiction, viz: the Gotha platform
of the German Social Democratic party, adopted as far back
as 1874 and embodying the famous doctrine that all other class-
es than labor are "but one reactionary mass." This doctrine
was "overruled" after a thorough discussion in the party press
ten years ago at the Erfurt convention, by which the present
platform was substituted for the antiquated Gotha platform.
It is unfortunate that the German pioneers of socialism in
America have not kept abreast of the development of socialist
thought in their native land.
There would be no end to this controversy were we to saddle
it with all the collateral issues which might with equal propriety
be raised in connection with any other problem one might)
choose in the vast field of socialism. I shall reserve the subject
of "historical fatalism" for independent treatment and will here
confine myself to one vital point, viz: the practice of treating
difference of opinion as an "infamous crime." My adversary
denies the allegation.
"Where," queries he, "have we attempted to fetter the free*
dom of scientific investigation?" Answer: In the article,
"Evolution or Revolution" ? on page 407, to-wit :
"I would earnestly request Bernstein, Marxist, et al., to con-
sider the following statements : "To invite strife and
schisms in a party by continually shaking its foundations with
worthless discussions actuated by superficial understanding is
criminal/'
It stands to reason that that which is criminal must be sup-
pressed ; that this is no mere figure of speech, the history of the
socialist parties in this country bears ample testimony. In
strict accordance with precedent the entire article reads like
an indictment "In re People vs. Marxist et al." The defend-
ant is charged with "class-prejudice" (p. 406, line 6) ; he is de-
scribed as "a man who, in comfortable circumstances, can sym-
pathize with the gloomy apprehensions raised in the breasts of
stock and bondholders by the growth of socialism" ; he is found
to be "emphasizing the necessity of justice for the capitalists
while gliding serenely by the proletarian's right to justice," and
trying "to lead us astray from the straight path of class-con-
scious socialism" (p. 406) with a view "to gain notoriety"
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SUMMING UP 781
thereby (p. 409, line 7) ; it is insinuated that "Bernstein, Marx-
ist & Co." would not "care openly to discuss social economy,"
if it threatened to involve them into trouble with the powers
that be. (a) Two pages are devoted to denunciation of a
"writer who can have the heart to talk learnedly of a gradual
process of evolution, while millions of his fellow-citizens are
forced to starve, etc., etc."
My accuser then proceeds to impose such penalties as are
within his power. "I respectfully decline to associate with
Marxist under the same label," says he in pronouncing sen-
tence. "Such a Marxist is not our comrade."
Social ostracism is one of the most dreadful punishments
known in the history of penal law. Where one dissenting from
the views held by the majority of his associates is in peril of
ostracism, or, to take a milder view, of personal villification,
freedom of thought and speech is very materially abridged.
It is my good luck that I am technically not a "comrade."
So I neither contend for the privilege of associating with the
gentleman "under the same label," nor am I amenable to such
penalties as might be duly inflicted upon a "comrade." I am
therefore in a fortunate position to take an impersonal view
of the matter. I shall not go into the question of the justice
of the procedure. Let us assume, as claimed by the advocates
of "discipline," that a "militant party" cannot exist if its mem-
bers are to be allowed to express views not in agreement with
"the principles of the party," or rather with what the majority
construes to be "the principles of the party." But, pray, be
at least as candid as the Russian Holy Synod, which makes no
pretense at favoring "freedom of scientific investigation" when
excommunicating Count Tolstoi.
Marxist.
(a) As the identity of Marxist is not disclosed it cannot be established whether he or
she (as the case may be) is a coward, or. on the contrary, a person possessed of sufficient
clvio courage to stand up for his (or her) views, even at the peril of persecution. But as
to Bernstein, who has spent the best years of his life as an exile in the service of the
German Social-Democratic party, the charge is, to say the least, contrary to evidence.
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Socialism in Belgium
HISTORY— 1857-1867.
LTHOUGH the establishment of the "Parti Ouvrier"
dates from April 9, 1885, we must trace the origin of
the socialist movement farther back. We emphasize
the word "socialist" in order to make it clear that we
do not deal here with those labor organizations that constitute
themselves on purely economic and industrial ground strang-
ers to the political battlefield, ignorant of the longing for social
transformation.
In 1857, the "Societe des Tisserands"* was founded in
Ghent. Ten years later it became the first local of the Ghentish
section of the International. From the beginning it was per-
secuted by the employers and the authorities. Numerous sen-
tences were pronounced on the laborers who dared to organize
and strike.
In i860, the weavers, the spinners and the metal workers
formed the "Federation des Ouvriers Gantois."f It is the first
union extending to more than one trade which the workers
founded in Belgium for the defense of their class interests. But
it still remained unconscious of the philosophical and theoretical
scope of its movement.
1 867- 1 873 — With the International, the movement assumed
a specifically socialist character and extended to the important
centers of the land. Belgium took an active part in the con-
gress of the International, but happily maintained a neutral
and conciliatory attitude amid the theoretical conflicts that
divided the members of the International and ended in a schism
at the Hague Congress in 1872.
In the meantime, the theoretical trend of Belgium socialism
assumed the clear outlines of collectivism and of the class strug-
gle, while borrowing from Proudhonian and French concep-
tions the idea of the universal character of socialism. To Cesar
De Paepe, the disciple of Colins, we must largely attribute the
present tendencies of socialism in Belgium.
1873-1885 — After the dissolution of the International, devoted
agitators in Ghent and Brussels succeeded in organizing a
number of labor unions and founded the "Parti Ouvrier Social-
iste Flamand" and the "Parti Ouvrier Brabanzon." In 1879,
a congress at Brussels founded the "Parti Socialiste Beige."
• Sodety of Wearers.
tFederation of Ghentish laborers.
781
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SOCIALISM IN BELGIUM 788
The agitation in favor of universal suffrage dates from this
year, while the co-operative movement, which later became
of such great importance, had its beginning in 1880.
Nevertheless, numerous labor organizations were afraid of
the word "socialist" and other societies, especially the "mutual-
ists," wished to hold aloof from political agitation.
In 1885 the Federation of Labor in Brussels invited all labor
societies without exception to a national congress for the pur-
pose of forming a new political party which should be distinct'
from the old liberal and catholic parties that hitherto had alone
been in the field. Henceforth the new party called itself "Parti
Ouvrier Beige/' and it has remained the only socialist organi-
zation in the country.
ORGANIZATION OP THE PARTY.
The great strength and cohesion of the "Parti Ouvrier Bel^e"
is mainly due to its uniform organization and its universality.
In the first place there is only the one party. Then the country
is divided into sections (election districts), each having its
federation. Such a federation comprises all the groups of the
same district, regardless of their nature — political groups, trade
unions, mutual benefit and co-operative societies, educational,
art and entertainment clubs, etc. This arrangement is of vital
importance, for through it the trade union, mutual benefit and
co-operative movements, which in other countries do not assist
socialism, have become in Belgium its strongest support.
Besides these district organizations, there are, of course,
others that unite the homogeneous groups of the whole coun-
try; for example: the national federations of trades (miners,
metal-workers, engineers, carpenters and cabinetmakers, stone-
workers, etc.) the federation of mutual benefit societies, the
federation of socialist municipal councillors, the federation of
socialist co-operatives for production and consumption, the fed-
eration of socialist lawyers, the federation of socialist physi-
cians and druggists, the federation of young guardsmen
(for anti-military propaganda), the federation of former
socialist soldiers, the federation of women's clubs, etc.
All these special organizations devote themselves, of course,
to their special field, but all of them are under the control of
the General Council of the party, in which nearly all are repre-
sented by delegates.
UNIVERSALITY OP THE MOVEMENT.
We mean by this that the "Parti Ouvrier Beige" is interested
in all the phases of the social question ; that nothing human is
foreign to it. The organizations composing it, therefore, are
of a very different character, as we have seen in the preceding
paragraph. Is not this becoming in a doctrine, in a party, that
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784 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
wishes to revolutionize the economic and moral relations of in-
dividuals to one another? In this manner, we interest in our
movement all lovers of justice, no matter what may be their
special field of activity, whether manual, intellectual, moral or
artistic. And from this universality, from this collaboration, re-
sults a mutual education well calculated to broaden the mental
horizon of all participants.
THE MUTUAL BENEFIT SOCIETIES.
As the mutual benefit societies were founded long before the
"Parti Ouvrier" came into being, the majority of them are not
affiliated with this party, although many of their members are
socialists. In certain parts of Belgium, however, notably in
the Charleroi valley and vicinity, the mutual benefit societies
constitute the backbone of the socialist labor organizations.
In Ghent, a large number of the old mutual benefit societies
were absorbed by the socialist federations and, as we shall sea
later on, the strong co-operative "Maison du Peuple" in Brus-
sels established in 1897 a free medical and pharmaceutical ser-
vice for all its members (18,000). There is at present a marked
tendency to combine the trade and mutual benefit organiza-
tions by creating trade unions on a mutual benefit basis. This
gives more stability to the trade unions. Each of these lines
has, of course, its own special funds. Many mutual benefit
societies deposit their funds in the powerful co-operatives of
the party.
THE UNIONS.
While the mutual benefit movement contains numerous or-
ganizations not belonging to the "Parti Ouvrier, ,, the trade
union movement is almost exclusively socialist. There are a
few liberal and catholic unions that were created by the reac-
tionaries for the purpose of counteracting the socialist activ-
ity, but their influence is insignificant. Furthermore, a few
neutral and unattached unions are in existence. Their mem-
bers, although mostly socialists, do not care for affiliation, in
order to avoid the resignation of the minority.
Although our trade union movement has made marked prog-
gress during the last years — about 400 unions are affiliated with
the party — still much is left to be done in this direction, espe-
cially as concerns stability and efficiency of the organization.
The unions are still too much affected by the more or less
prosperous state of their trades. When wages rise, the union
is too often forgotten.
Efficiency is not yet what it should be, owing partly to the
lack of stability just mentioned, partly to the fact that the re-
sources of the unions are generally insufficient, because the
dues are too small.
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SOCIALISM IN BELGIUM 785
lit order to remedy these defects and give to the movement
the importance it deserves, the "Parti Ouvrier" appointed a
special commission, "La Commission Syndicate"* that devotes
its time particularly to these questions in all their aspects, such
as discussions, statistics, publications, etc.
THB CO-OPBRATIVES
The co-operative movement in the Belgian Labor Party be-
gan in 1880. To-day it has become of the greatest importance
and we may say that the organization of Belgian socialism
finds its main support in the co-operatives. At present 200
co-operatives are affiliated with the party, 175 of which are con-
sumers' and 25 producers' clubs.
Nearly all these consumers' co-operatives have the same very
modest beginning — a score or so of comrades who have suc-
ceeded in saving a few hundred francs found a bakery. This
soon becomes prosperous. Frequently the bakery is estab-
lished in a store that serves at the same time as a meeting
room. In such case the room contains a bar for the sale of
beverages to the general public, and the socialists of the local-
ity meet, join for recreation and read their journals, etc., in
this room. The meeting rooms thus serve as common centers
for all organizations existing in the locality (unions, mutual
benefits, labor leagues, political clubs, etc.) There also the ma-
jority of public meetings are held. The co-operative bears all
the expense of the meeting room. As to the profits, the mem-
bers share in a part of them in the ratio of their consumptive
power, but a goodly part is also devoted to the socialist
propaganda; for securing speakers at the expense of the co-
operative, for buying and distributing pamphlets, for lending
assistance to strikers and for electoral struggles.
These co-operatives have, furthermore, the invaluable advan-
tage of freeing from the yoke of bosses hundreds of workers
who often are persecuted for their independence of character.
These men become so many agitators who have nothing to fear.
It is easy to understand what a tremendous amount of propa-
ganda is carried on in these co-operatives, for in distinction
from other organizations their influence is continuous and un^
remitting. They unite the most divergent elements, and after
attracting the partly converted by the prospect of sharing in
the surplus, they convert them fully by discussions, journals
and pamphlets.
In its further development, the co-operative often adds to
its bakery a grocery, a dry goods store, a confectionery, a
butcher shop.
Some of these societies in the great centers (Brussels, Ghent,
* The Committee on Trade Unions.
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*tt
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST ItE VIEW
Jolimont, Antwerp, Liege, etc.) have gained considerable in-
fluence. The "Maison du Peuple" in Brussels, for instance,
which opened in 1884 with sixty members and 300 to 400 fr.,
has at present about 20,000 members and property worth 2,032,-
000 francs.
It may be interesting to give here the list of surplus income
realized and distributed during the half year from July 1 ta
December 31, 1900:*
Surplus Realized. Division of Surplus.
The sum total of surplus inoomes
is made up as follows :
Francs.
Surplus from general merchan-
dise 18,487.88
Surplus from bakeries 900,367.61
Surplus from coal 11,981.85
Surplus from confectionery and
novelties 14,676.87
Surplus from Maison du Peuple
(cafe) 16,140.08
Surplus from butter 515.10
Surplus from Maison du Peuple
inMohlenbeck 16.01
Surplus from sale of milk 1 ,288.46
258,807.80
Loss of butcher shops 1,489.78
Total surplus 256,944.48
This surplus will be distributed
in the following manner:
Francs.
Sinking fund for mortgage 88,985.00
For loans and interest 40,000.00
Shares of different co-opera-
tives 8,000.00
Free medical and pharmaceut-
ical servioe to heads of fam-
ilies 80,816.88
Propaganda, claims, subsidies
and assistance to groups and
suffering members 18,688.89
2U£ to the employees 6,488,81
To distribute on 5,008,818 kilos
of bread at 8 centimes per loaf 150,085.88
Sum total 896,944.48
The dividends will be paid in checks presentable immediately
in the confectioneries and novelty stores, and on or after May
2 in the other departments.
We see that in the distribution of dividends, the "Maison du
Peuple," like the majority of great co-operatives, gives free
medical and pharmaceutical service to its members. In order
to bring the shares of the co-operatives within reach of every
workingman, they seldom are made larger than io fr., and this
sum may be paid by advances on the dividends. But no co-
operator is admitted without adhering to the socialist program.
OTHER ORGANIZATIONS
These are of a various nature. The following are the prin-
cipal types :
Labor Leagues — These are devoted exclusively to political
purposes and found in the principal communities.
Young Guard — Their specialty is propaganda for anti-mili-
tarism among the young people before they enter the army.
They publish journals and pamphlets for anti-militarism.
Educational — a. "LTnstitut Industriel," founded in Brus-
sels three years ago, admits children 14 to 18 years old and
gives them a complete humanitarian and technical education,
b. Students' Clubs, with libraries, inviting professors for lec-
tures.
* A franc is about 80 cents.
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SOCIALISM IN BELGIUM 787
Arts and Entertainments — Societies for the organization of
artistic festivities, dramatic clubs, vocal and instrumental music
clubs.
PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE PARTY
"Le Peuple," official daily in the French language, 5 cen-
times (one cent), edition 70,000.
"L'Echo du Peuple," daily in the French language, 2 cen-
times ,edition 70,000.
"Le Journal de Charleroi," unofficial, but socialist daily, 5
centimes.
"Vooruit," official Flemish daily, 2 centimes, edition 16,000.
"De Werker," Flemish daily, especially for Antwerp, 5 cen-
times.
There are, in addition, numerous local weeklies and trade
union papers.
The party has also a monthly review, "L'Avenir Social," con-
taining four departments — a general part, a co-operative bulle-
tin, a trade union bulletin, a municipal bulletin.
PARTY MANAGEMENT
This is in the hands of a General Council composed of a per-
manent bureau and as many representatives as there are dis-
trict federations and professional federations. The permanent
bureau is composed of nine members living at the seat of the
Council (Brussels). These nine members are elected every
year, not by the Council, but by the annual congress of all or-
ganizations in the country. The Council has a permanent sal-
aried secretary. The deputies and senators of the party have
the right to take part in the meetings of the Council, but can-
not vote.
POLITICAL ACTIVITY AND POWER OF THE PARTY
The political activity of the party made itself felt notably
after 1886, the year of the bloody strikes, revolts and crises
marking the beginning of a new period for the political and
social creed in Belgium.
However, the "Parti Ouvrier" could not obtain any success
in the elections until 1893, because the franchise was restricted
to those who paid a state tax of at least 42 fr.
But in 1893, after new violent demonstrations, we succeeded
in obtaining the present election law, which gives one vote to
citizens of 21 years, but grants a second and a third vote
to the professional men and the property-holders.
For the communal elections, the age of 30 years is required
and one man may have as many as four votes. In spite of this,
28 socialist deputies were elected out of 152 in the very first
election for parliament in 1894; about 320,000 votes were cast
for thejnr
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788 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
In 1900 the party obtained about 463,000 votes and elected
32 deputies and four senators.
In the last communal elections (1899) we elected councillors
in about 240 communities, bringing the total number of social-
ist councillors up to about 950 and giving us a socialist or so-
cialist-radical majority in fifty-seven communities.
At present the activity of the party is mainly devoted to the
consolidation of all its organizations, of which there are about
1,000. We said that the propaganda among trade unionists de-
manded and absorbed a great deal of our energy. The recent
creation of the "Federation des Co-operatives" is already yield-
ing excellent results and brings within easy range the moment
when the union of the 200 co-operatives belonging to it will
give to the central organ the power of those immense "whole-
sale societies" of Manchester and Glasgow. This power will
be used by us for the cause o£ socialism.
The development of our daily press also claims our close
attention, and the plans for its transformation will require a
loan of 150,000 fr., which, we hope, will be guaranteed by our
great co-operatives.
As to the political side of our movement, we in the first place
aim at securing universal suffrage pure and simple. The strug-
gle is beginning, but our party has decided to act with the ut-
most caution. For we know that we shall meet a desperate
resistance, and that the reactionaries are determined to stop at
nothing in the attempt to prevent us from obtaining that polit-
ical equality which will mark the end of their rule.
By force of our organization we shall triumph!
Etnile Vinck.
(Translated by E. Untermann. )
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The Revolutionary Movement in Russia
HE history of the revolutionary movement in Russia
begins with the December insurrection in 1825. True,
long before this disturbance the intellectual elite of
our society had become familiar with Western ideas. But this
was the first serious attempt of Russian revolutionaries to limit
autocracy in favor of liberty.
It is well known that the secret societies, formed in Russia
after the Napoleonic wars and composed mainly of superior
officers and functionaries, had tried to profit by the general con-
fusion caused by the death of Alexander I. On the 26th of
December, 1825, an armed uprising took place on Senate
Square, where several determined leaders had succeeded in pre-
vailing on some troops to espouse their cause. This insurrec-
tion had no immediate success. The political and social state
of affairs in Russia was as yet too unfavorable.
For a time the suppression of the revolt gave free scope to
the most pronounced reaction. Nicholas I. succeeded his
brother Alexander. Frightened, on coming into power, at the
revolutionary explosion, he not only became the executioner
of his own country, but also the protector of all European re-
actions, the chief policeman of Europe. Thanks to his policy,
Russia for a long time became the land of barbarism. The
Tsar made the name of Russia an abomination to all the lovers
of freedom in Europe.
Nevertheless, in spite of all forcible measures, the intellectual
and social development of Russia followed its course, giving
birth to ever new ideas and to more and more pronounced rev-
olutionary tendencies. Toward the middle of the nineteenth:
century, we see the elements of scientific thought taking form
and a liberal opposition arising. Even the first communist
circles establish themselves, as e.g., Petrachevsky and other
advocates of Fourier's system.
The fall of Sebastopol in 1855 put an end to the policy and,
at the same time, to the life of Nicholas, who died in a fit of
impotent rage, perhaps voluntarily. The best elements of so-
ciety rejoiced over the defeat of Russia, for they knew that it
meant the beginning of the social and political renewal of the
country. The heavy boot of the crowned soldier ceased to
crush the land which for the first time drew a breath of relief
on learning of the death of the cursed tyrant.
The country seemed to head with full sails for the promised
789
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790 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
land of liberty. Serfdom could no longer resist the force of
events. The people excitedly demanded their freedom. The
new requirements of Russia — the necessity of developing the
industries, the credit, agriculture, means of communication and,
finally, the national defense — could no longer be reconciled with
the survivals of barbarism. And serfdom was abolished in 1861.
Then commenced tfie period of so-called "great reforms"
that even to this day enjoys a considerable reputation among
Russian liberals. Provincial councils (zemstvos), a certain local
autonomy, a new code, juries and publicity of legal proceed-
ings were granted. But the vital evil of Russian life, the auto-
cratic regime, remained in full force and soon annulled by de-
grees all the reforms it had established.
The shortcomings of rural reforms became evident soon
afterwards. The lots that had been assigned to the former
serfs at a price much above their value — while the best land
was reserved for the masters — proved to be insufficient for the
maintenance of the farmers' families and the covering of all
expenses. We may say that even at the moment of enfran-
chisement the government and the nobility had a perfect under-
standing on the subject of making the farmer a proletarian who
should be different from the city proletarian only in that Ete
bondage was harder.
All these facts in addition to the renewed strengthening of
the political reaction after the downfall of heroic Poland gave
an incredible intensity to the revolutionary fermentation among
the young intellectuals who now belonged in a great part to
the middle and lower classes. The first revolutionary organi-
zations in the true sense of the word, made their appearance
in the beginning of the "famous sixties," when it became clear
that the autocratic government could not and would not sat-
isfy the just demands of the people. At this period, the rev-
olutionary movement was already accompanied by troubles
in the universities. Demonstrations took place in 1861 in all
the higher schools of St. Petersburg. Secret societies, "Young
Russia" and "Land and Liberty" were formed for the purpose
of producing a general uprising of the farmers and establish-
ing the republic in Russia. These societies were in continual
touch with the Polish revolutionaries, and more than one mem-
ber of "Land and Liberty" fell while fighting in the ranks of
the Polish insurgents.
The activity of the International that everywhere aroused
the revolutionary instincts and socialist tendencies could cer-
tainly not remain without influence on the young people of
Russia. It is true that after the great schism in the Interna-
tional, dividing the world of socialism into Marxists and
Bakounists, the majority of Russian revolutionaries lined up
on the side of Bakounin, the apostle of universal anarchism.
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THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN RUSSIA *9i
But this anarchism was in Russia a mere phrase corresponding
to the comparative immaturity of revolutionary thought, which
did not yet propose to itself the political problems formulated
later on by Russian socialists. It is clear that the immediate
goal of Russian socialists could not be anything but the abQn
Ution of the autocratic regime and the conquest of liberty. Fop
only under such conditions would the real development and
organization of the socialist party be possible.
In order to understand the true character of the movement
at that time, it suffices to cast a glance at the state of Russian
society during that period. Barely freed from bondage and just
entering the road to industrial progress, Russia was almost
wholly an agricultural country. From the uniform sea of rural
districts emerged, like little islands, a few towns and industrial
centers with a working population scarcely distinguishable from
the rural masses. In the greatest part of Russia agricultural
communities were still in existence, in which, at least so the
agitators believed, communistic principles were still kept alive.
In seeking for the objective conditions of social revolution
among the realities of Russian life, the agitators quite naturally
turned their eyes toward those germs to which they attributed
the powers of spontaneously developing in a collectivist direc-
tion. According to them, it was only a question of ridding the
people of the police rule and bureaucratic pressure that ob-
structed the true tendencies of the national character, in order
to transform the rural commune into the fundamental cell for
the generation of the higher stages of collectivism.
This movement was a veritable crusade recalling the enthusi-
asm of the early days of Christianity. Young men and women
from all classes of society broke their family ties, left their
positions and, dressed like farmers, went to the shops and es-
pecially into the country, in order to bring the glad tidings of
the new gospel to the humble people bending under the yoke
of toil. They were soon joined by men who had already ob-
tained a station in society as officials, officers or proprietors, all
animated by the same belief, the same passion, the same en-
thusiasm. But this movement, so beautiful and grand, was
wrecked on the ignorance of the people and the persecutions
of the government. And the main leaders paid for their devo-
tion to the cause of the people with their lives or long years
of convict labor.
While this movement was not crowned by immediate suc-
cess, still it was the first serious attempt to bring the intellectual
socialists and the working masses closer to each other. During
this process we already see simple laborers and workers from
the shops appearing by the side of the intellectuals, eagerly
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792 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
grasping the hand that is offered to them by the young revo-
lutionaries.
The revolutionaries would not admit in the beginning that
the ignorance of the people and the tyranny of the autocratic
government were the principal obstacles to their progress.
Therefore they decided to modify only their tactics without
changing their program and their doctrine. Instead of a mili-
tant propaganda, they resolved to try the system of permanent
colonies among the peasants, in order to act on the masses
through their daily needs. But it must be noticed that in this
program a new element was introduced, being in a manner
political under the form of a terrorism purporting to foil and
punish the spies and the most detested and obnoxious agents
of the government. And thus the famous secret society, "Land
and Liberty" was formed.
The system of permanent colonies failed in due time, and this
is not difficult to understand in view of the political conditions
and the constant hunting down of suspected men by the gov-
ernment. Small wonder that political tendencies took more ancj
more root among the militant revolutionary socialists, and that
the voices demanding an immediate fight against the autocracy
made themselves heard ever more imperatively. At the same
time the laboring proletariat of the cities began to assume
a steadily growing importance for the attention of the revolu-
tionary party.
Even before the theory took form, according to which the
political struggle and the endeavors to attain liberty occupy
a dominant place in the socialist program, several circum-
stances were busy paving the way to new conceptions.
Without mentioning the numerous executions of spies and
the armed resistance at the moment of arrest, a series of at-
tempts on the life of the Tsar and high functionaries were car-
ried out. The chief of police, Mezentsof, was stabbed in broad
daylight on the street by Kravtchinsky. The governor general
of Kharkof, Prince Krapotkin, father of the famous Peter Kra-
potkin, was killed by a shot from a revolver. Mirsky made
an attempt on the life of the prefect Drerrteln. And finally
Solovief fired at the Tsar. In this purely terroristic struggle,
which became more and more bitter and extended, the question
of killing the Tsar soon became the main issue.
Amid the growling of the terrorist storm, while the govern-
ment lost its head and the liberal opposition became more
courageous, the famous "Will of the People" with its terrible
"Executive Committee" was formed. This elusive committee
answered all the forcible measures of the government, the
mass expulsions and pitiless executions with more and more
terrifying blows — a series of attempts on the life of Tsar
Alexander II., the imperial train wrecked by an explosion near
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THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN RUSSIA 793
Moscow, the Winter Palace shaken by dynamite and the crown-
ing event ending in the killing of the tyrant on March 13, 1881.
In this tragic duel between New Russia and Old Russia, the
"Will of the People," to which Marx at this period gave the
title of "Vanguard of the European Revolution," succeeded in
spite of its limited numbers in becoming the talk of the whole
world and wresting a few concessions from the tyrant. How-
ever, although from time to time a certain number of people
from the laboring class joined, under the influence of socialist
propaganda, the party of militant intellectuals, still the latter
did not find sufficient support among the unenlightened mass
of the people and again suffered defeat.
This defeat hurled Russia back into reactionary bart>arism.
A long and dark night began, rarely interrupted by outbreaks
of indignation. All the results accomplished by society were
nullified by the government. Still this furious struggle had
placed the Russian socialists at the head of the general oppo-
sition. They had proved by deeds tfaat the socialists alone
could be the true champions of political liberty and national
regeneration.
* * * * *
While the triumphant reaction, after reducing the land by its
economic and fiscal system to the famine of the "terrible year"
1891-92, celebrated its odious orgies on the bodies of the mar-
tyred peasants, convinced of having crushed the hydra of rev-
olution, the revolutionist again made his appearance. This
time he was no longer alone. Batallions of laborers with red
flags followed him. For the years of Alexander III.'s reac-
tionary policy were at the same time a period of rapid indus-
trial development. After the manner of all despots, Alexan-
der III. took care to protect the economic interests of the
privileged classes in order to dampen the political opposition
and withdraw all ground beneath its feet. At this epoch, the
Russian bourgeoisie acquired its great strength. But in pro-
portion as it grew, the role of the Russian proletariat also in-
creased in importance. Thus the irony of fate decreed that
absolutism, while striving to remain in power, contributed itself
to strengthening its implacable enemy, its own grave-digger.
For some time the city proletariat had already taken part
in the revolutionary struggle. But up to 1895, on 'y single in-
dividuals or isolated groups shared in it. Henceforth the prole-
tariat steps on the scene and the epoch of great strikes begins.
Some of the most remarkable strikes were those in St.
Petersburg and Moscow in 1895, '96 and '97. The strike of
40,000 laborers in St. Petersburg had lasted two months. It
was again taken up in the winter of 1897 anc * forced the gov-
ernment hastily to decree the law of June 2, 1897, establish-
ing the day of eleven hours and a half in the factories.
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794 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
The theory of the Russian social democrats had been formed
during the first half of the eighties by the amalgamation of the
programs of the populists and the "Will of the People." Now
for the first time the conditions necessary for a strong social-
ist movement were given. The same causes that had produced
the strikes among the masses created among the revolutionary
intellectuals an ideological movement in the sense of Marxian
doctrines. The Russian Social Democracy was born by the
combination of these two currents.
To unite the separate local movements, to give to the revolu-
tionary activity a common direction and a definite program —
this was the mission of the Social Democratic Labor Party of
Russia. In the spring of 1898 the congress of the different local
sections that were united in one single party took place and a
political manifesto was published. Although the police had
soon succeeded in arresting the central committee elected at
this congress, the movement was in no way checked. Every-
where, in all the great cities of the empire — in Moscow, St.
Petersburg, Kharkof, Kief, Odessa, Ekaterinoslaf, Rostov, St.
the Don, Ivanovo, Vosniesensk and other places — local com-
mittees of the party came into being. These committees car-
ried on an energetic propaganda of an economic and political
character among the masses, and to their activity is due the
admirable solidarity which we have witnessed of late between
the laboring masses and the revolting students.
* * * * *
No forcible measure of the government will any longer be
able to suppress the Russian labor movement, which is the
natural product of the economic and social development of
the country. It will continue to grow until the moment ar-
rives for its complete victory over the despotism of the Tsars.
The entrance of the laboring class into the political struggle
seems to have tenfold increased the strength of the revolu-
tionary intellectuals, who until now were unable to overturn
the present government. Everything proves that the Russian
revolutionary movement develops by enlarging its ranks and
assimilating all the active and healthy elements of the land.
At last we see realized the alliance between the workers with
hand and the workers with brain which Peter Lavrof, one of
the most illustrious leaders of Russian socialists, foresaw,
praised and invoked with all his powers, that union between
science and labor which according to Lassalle shall crush in
its strong arms every obstacle it meets in its way.
Now the abolition of autocracy is only a matter of time.
The Russian Committee,
Appointed by the representatives of the Russian socialist or-
ganizations in Paris.
(Translated by B. Untermann. )
(From "Pages Libres," April 20, 1901.)
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To The Labor Parties of All Countries.
HE International Socialist Bureau issued the follow-
ing circular :
It is superfluous to repeat the details of the im-
portant events that are taking place at this hour in
Russia. Our comrades are familiar with them through press
reports and through the communications of our Russian friends
to socialist papers.
According to the statements made by Russian delegates at
the International Socialist Congress, the events of these last
months mark a turning point in the history of the Tsar's em-
pire. Troubles that were originally confined to the universi-
ties have gradually developed into serious and profound social
disturbances, shaking all Russia, striking at the foundation of
Russian society and engaging the intellectuals of the city as
well as the proletariat of the industrial centers in a long and
painful, yet inspiring, struggle against the forces of Tsarism.
Down there in Russia, thousands of workers in factories and
shops, thousands of citizens of all classes, are encouraged by
the grandeur of the task before them and full of confidence in
the solidarity of their comrades in Europe, America, Australia
and Asia, for they know that in fighting against Russian capi-
talism and despotism they are battling for the liberation of the
workers — the common cause of the labor parties of all coun-
tries.
In France, meetings have already taken place for the pur-
pose of influencing public opinion in favor of the revolutionary
situation in Russia. In Belgium, such meetings are being or-
ganized. We hope that the socialist parties of England, Ger-
many, Austria, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Spain,
the United States and of all other countries will follow this
example, in order that the international proletariat may be
unanimous in its protests against the brutal acts of Tsarism.
We beg that in all great cities and in all important industrial
and academic centers meetings be organized and a resolution
of protest be submitted to the participants, or, where necessary,
protests be circulated for signatures. We propose to you the
following motion for ratification at all your meetings :
"The citizens assembled in response to the call of
cheer on the Russian proletariat. They make common cause
with the Russian intellectuals and laborers in their fight
against combined capitalism and Tsarism. They send the ex-
< 796
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796 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
pression of their sympathy to the Russian revolutionaries and
encourage them to continue the fight until victory is attained."
We furthermore request that you will inform us without de-
lay what you have done in this direction and to send us the res-*
olutions of protest in order that we may be enabled to cen-
tralize the movement of denouncing the actions of a hateful
and barbarous government.
Victor Serwy, Secretary.
(Translated by E. Untermann.)
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REVERENCE
I wonder if respect and reverence have not done more harm
than good.
How rarely have men revered the truly reverend and respected
the truly respectable!
How much of reverence has been, and still is, mere fetish-
worship !
Reverence for Moloch and Juggernaut, who will count its
victims ?
Respect for tyrants and despots, for lying priests and blind
teachers, how it has darkened the pages of history!
There is only one true respect, the respect for the conscious
life that fulfills its true function.
Revere humanity wherever you find it, in the judge or in the
milkman, but do not revere any institution or office or
writing.
As soon as anything outside of divine humanity is revered and
respected, it becomes dangerous, —
And every step forward in the annals of man has been over
the prostrate corpse of some ancient unmasked reverence.
Rhinebeck, N. Y. Ernest Crosby,
Author of Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable.
7VT
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The Charity Girl
By Caroline H. Pemberton, Author of "Stephen the Black," "Your Little
Brother James," Etc.
CHAPTER VII.
OLLING hills, little lakes and patches of hop vine-
yards lay around the white homestead of the
Endicotts in a country bearing an Indian name.
The house lay between two well-known summer
resorts — one sixteen miles off and the other many more.
Sometimes, adventurous coaches filled with gay city folk
followed the hilly road past the home of the widow Endi-
cott, whose old-fashioned, profusely filled flower garden beyond
the white fence often attracted th$ careless wonder of the pas-
sengers. Their acquaintance with country people being con-
fined to the heroes and heroines of certain New England stor-
ies, their imaginations peopled the smiling landscape with the
types which such tales have made familiar. To their minds
such cold, dry folk could have nothing in common with the
bright flowers which must have sprung up of their own sweet
will, in spite of the withering glances cast upon them by the
unlovely beings whose homes they adorned.
JBut it was to escape the barrenness of the New England soil
that so many of her sons had settled on the highlands of the
two great middle states of the Union. When they transformed
the forest-clad slopes into velvety pastures and yellow fields*
of grain — audaciously standing on end as if the hills had pitched
them forward in a peal of laughter — they had no intention of
reproducing the hard conditions of their forefathers.
The pulse of the national life bounded through them warmly
and abundantly ; the suiminess of their new home planted flow-
ers inside and out; it carpeted the floors and curtained the
windows; it built the frequent school house and its cheerful
neighbor with the spire pointing a white finger towards a sky
that was mirrored in the valleys and on the hills in countless
little lakes. Their social life was blossoming into a rustic cul-
ture as simple and hardy as the flowers by the roadside. Their
newspapers and periodicals were keeping them in touch with
the world's progress; their numerous well-fed horses — home
raised, the pride of every household— carried families from vil-
lage to county seat, from sociable to picnic and camp meeting,
and made lectures, concerts and political meetings no longer
forbidden fruit to the women.
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THE CHARITY GIRL 7W
In their growing fastidiousness, the farmers threw their barns
across the road and often to a considerable distance, in striking
contrast to the fashion of their Massachusetts cousin, whose
buildings are still hugged to his heart as if he fears an un-
friendly fate is waiting a chance to rob him.
The^ sweet, wholesome goodness of Julian's mother was en-
tirely in keeping with these surroundings. She was as much a
product of them as the red-cheeked apples in her orchard, or
the aromatic hop vines that climbed tall poles in rectangular
profusion across the road. There was nothing about her to
indicate the remotest relationship to the grim, angular
countrywoman whose bleak countenance we contemplate
so wearily in fiction. Equally far removed was she from
the vulgar, florid personage who "calkerlates" everything in our
literature, from the quality of her pumpkin pies to the limita-
tions of God's mercy. Is it true, O ye authors, that God can
make a sunflower and a clever sort of hollyhock to adorn a
country landscape, but that the violet, the narcissus and the
rose are to be gathered only in the hot-houses of man, between
glaring city walls and sun-baked brick pavements echoing with
the tramp of commercial feet?
Not being manufactured to sell to the magazines, but having
grown up at random, as it were, with no one to select a dialect
for her from the pages of a successful novel, Julian's mother
appeared at middle age as a cheery, soft-eyed gentlewoman
with an impulsive manner toward friends and a shy air of re-
serve toward strangers, in whose presence she blushed and flut-
tered like a timid school girl. It is true that her vocabulary
was limited. She was accustomed to say that she knew the
meaning of many long words when she came across them in
reading that she presumed she wouldn't feel acquainted with if
she were to meet them in a spelling book ; but this only proved
that she read intelligently in spite of a limited scholarship.
Nearly every other day brought a part of her library by mail —
a bi-weekly from the great city newspapers, or a Farmer's
Home Journal, or a Floral Cultivator, a Poultry Fancier, or a
local record of events in the county. All of these she diligently
perused in the evening by the light of the hanging-lamp. A sys-
tem of exchange with neighbors brought other periodicals
within reach, so that her stock of reading material was really
extensive, though it was not exactly academic in style, and did
not include a knowledge of life based chiefly on disproportion.
It may be, however, as profitable to study an improved diet for
chickens or a new scourge for rose bugs, as to contemplate the
lives of impossible young persons whose sole business in life
being to make love, do it so badly that five hundred pages are
too few to tell the sad mess they make of it.
Julian's father had possessed the tastes of a naturalist and
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he had acquired during his lifetime considerable skill as a
taxidermist. Julian remembered him as a thoughtful, spare
man, whose kind, observant eyes saw more in the fields than
his prospective crops. The house was still full of his treasures ;
motionless squirrels cracked nuts from corner shelves in bed-
room and parlor ; beavers, lizards, raccoons, robins, woodpeck-
ers and owls crowded every closet and book shelf, their glass
eyes staring a steady surprise at the intruder.
When Elizabeth arrived, she spent much of her time exam-
ining these curiosities, and she found a strange delight in strok-
ing the furry backs and shining plumage of wild things that no
longer started from her in terror. There were drawers full of
Indian relics and cases of beetles and butterflies, carefully num-
bered and named, and the widow was greatly pleased at Eliz-
abeth's notice of them. While she was busily spelling out the
names, the widow was studying the little maid with something
of the loving care that her husband had been used to bestow
on a new specimen from his fields. She was seeking not to
classify but to understand Elizabeth. In her eyes it was no
fault to be silent, for she was accustomed to the presence of
dumb creatures. Elizabeth was an undomesticated young thing
and perhaps might be wooed into nearness by much the same
methods one uses toward a wood pigeon. All the young Rus-
sian's life had been spent among strangers — with them, yet not
of them — a member of the household, but not of the home.
But as she now felt the difference in her surroundings, she be-
came more inscrutable than ever.
The widow planned little excursions for her, and when Julian
arrived a few days later she often sent them away to seek en-
tertainment together. But Elizabeth's shy dark eyes still con-
tinued to make an appeal which the widow was unable to un-
derstand.
Back of the house and at the end of the orchard there was
a little lake, nameless except for its association with an old
hermit, who many years ago had lived in a cabin by the water's
edge. It was a solitary piece of water ; Julian's boat was almost
the only one to be found on its shores except when the fisher-
men came in the early fall to catch bass.
Julian had been rowing Elizabeth one afternoon from one
end of this lake to the other. He was glad to rest his oars
while she reached after water lilies that were growing near.
Elizabeth arranged her flowers and Julian fixed his eyes
across the water on a distant meadow in the center of which an
elm tree reared its feathery outlines against the sky. It was a
familiar landmark; he had often wondered at its suggestion
of loneliness and poetic feeling. Like himself, it seemed to have
strayed from its fellows ; it stood as if lost in spiritual contem-
plation, between earth and sky. But just now Julian failed
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THE CHARITY GIRL 801
to notice the beauty of this tree ; in fact the whole landscape
was like a curtain that shut off a picture on which his thoughts
constantly dwelt.
Beyond the curtaining landscape lay the real scene of his
thoughts — a conventional garden with a narrow white path
leading between heavily laden rose bushes to the low bay win-
dow of a country house. It was Marian's country home, a few
miles out of the city, where Julian had spent many happy hours
before dragging himself away to visit his mother. There, on a
rustic bench, he could distinctly see the form of Marian — now
with the moonlight falling on her face. Her voice — her exqui-
site speaking voice — was in his ear. But why should the
thought of that spot, the remembrance of the voice and even
the scent of the roses cause him an anguish to which every
added detail brought an extra pang?
Julian's mother an hour before had alluded playfully to his
bringing home a young wife to share their simple interests.
The words had shocked him inexpressibly. A wife — a stranger
— to intrude into his life — and Marian left standing alone in her
garden with a smile on her lips — what a revolting thought!
A step forward saw Marian revealed as if by a flash of light-
ning — in his arms as the bride of his mother's fancy ! An impos-
sible vision — an unholy dream — he knew it to be.
In anguish, Julian broke up this tableau of his unruly imag-
ination, and saw himself — still in sight of the garden — making
one of a lingering procession of sorrowful figures whose wist-
ful eyes were fixed like his on a beloved, unattainable object.
Had he then joined the ranks of the unfortunates who share
the hopeless passion of the Petrarchs, the Tassos, the Dantes
of history? As he gazed longingly at his rose garden and its
occupant, he caught his breath sharply and turned his eyes
away from the hills and meadow, beyond which his boyish soul
saw stretching out before him an appalling fate.
His strained look fell suddenly upon Elizabeth's face — he
was startled by its expression. She was looking at him with
the same intense absorption that was in his own eyes when they
were gazing across the lake. Her young face was full of pain,
as if indeed she saw that same procession which had filled his
soul with dismay. Quickly their eyes met; they both looked
away. Julian's heart leaped with kindness towards the desolate
young creature. He exerted himself to distract her thoughts.
"How decidedly grown up you look this summer," he said
with an effort at brightness and careless of what he said. "The
next thing will be that I shall be asked to give you away in
marriage — what a dreadful possibility, Elizabeth!"
"Do the waifs ever marry?" she asked with what seemed to
him a rather unnatural gravity. "The managers say they are
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not to have lovers — it's one of their rules that* I copied in type-
writing."
Julian frowned a little. "While they're very young and in-
experienced such rules are necessary, but of course we know
that they cannot remain children all their lives." It was a
point of etiquette, but an exceedingly tiresome one, to assume
that all the views of the managers were his own.
"But they remain waifs all their lives — nobody ever forgets
that I Nobody ever will forget as long as I live that I was one
of the waifs !"
Julian was startled at the energy of her tone. Her face was
as pale as the wet lillies in her hand.
"I thought you had outgrown that morbid fancy, Elizabeth,"
he answered reproachfully. "You are self-supporting and ca-
pable of making your way anywhere. I — that is, the Associa-
tion — have advised your employment in the office because we
wish to stand between you and the cold world a little longer.
We are very proud of you — you mustn't forget that, Elizabeth
— you do us infinite credit."
"I ought to be put in a case," she interrupted with an odd,
shy smile, that had only the barest suggestion of mirth in it.
"I know that's why they want me there — to point me out to
strangers as one of the results of their work."
"What nonsense!" Julian cried half angrily; but he could
not contradict her because he knew it to be true.
"Why should you look upon it as a degradation to have been
under our care ? It has been our greatest happiness to do the
little we have done ! You have brightened our existence ; why
can't you be generous enough to accept what we have given as
though it came from your parents?"
In his spirit of self-abnegation, Julian had schooled himself
to credit all his performances to the Association — which* was
not as great a hardship as shouldering all their blunders — but
this transfer of feeling and sentiment to an impersonal organ-
ization was stretching a transparent fiction to ridiculous limits,
and Elizabeth evidently felt it to be so. She raised her head
a little and looked at him with an air of childish defiance.
"I could never have had eighteen parents!"
"Eighteen? Oh, yes — I see; but why stop there? If you
count the managers separately, you must also count the twelvf
trustees, and add to them the twelve hundred regular subscrib-
ers and the six hundred or so irregular contributors — eighteen
hundred and thirty — and I may add my humble, unworthy self,
may I not? — making eighteen hundred and thirty-one parents.
Well, I agree with you, that is rather a cumbersome lot to re-
gard with filial devotion !"
"Well, you see, then," — Elizabeth looked at him with her
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qoeer little wistful smile, ignoring his attempt to be merry.
"You see they can't be the* same — as parents."
"No, not precisely the same, you child. But if we do our
best, Elizabeth, to make up for our unhappy mongrel, plural
condition, may we not receive just a scrap of consolation from
the fact that you are a little better off than you would have
been without us ?" He bent toward her, but the "us" evidently
hurt her.
She turned her face toward the meadow and looked steadily
at the elm tree. Julian looked at it also, and as he gazed he
slowly forgot his part in the conversation as the overwhelming
pain of his thoughts returned to him. As he looked at the
tree, it appeared to him strangely as an emblem of suffering —
almost as significant as the cross itself ! In some strange man-
ner, the elm seemed to communicate from one to the other the
sorrow and loneliness that were in the hearts of these two
young persons. Julian turned upon Elizabeth his sad eyes.
Elizabeth suddenly faced him with quivering lips.
"I cannot love the whole eighteen hundred and thirty-one—
not even if you tell me I must," she broke out passionately.
The poor child was trembling with suppressed feeling.
"I never expected you to, Elizabeth; I was only making a
very sorry jest at your expense. Forgive me, I know — I under-
stand all that you have lost and suffered." He was very much
stirred and deeply ashamed of his callousness in having wound-
ed her.
"I am not ungrateful, but I am grateful only to you, for it
is you who have done everything for me. I could love you as I
would my parents, but the others — never!"
"I know well enough what the human heart craves," Julian
answered, looking at her with a kind of dejected seriousness.
"I know well enough what you have missed. God grant that
you may find something some day to take its place. He surely
has that compensation in store for you." His eyes took in her
neat, graceful figure as he spoke, her delicate profile with its
background of dark heavy hair — but he had already said more
on the subject of lovers than was discreet in addressing a waif—
so he fell back on more commonplace consolation.
"You have my warmest gratitude for the assistance you give
me in the office; nobody can fill your place there, Elizabeth.
You are my real right hand. Is it any wonder that I do not
want you to escape from the clutch of the eighteen hundred
*nd thirty-one parents ? No, not for a long while yet !"
Elizabeth smiled with joy, a faint color warming her cold
face into positive beauty.
"You do not understand what it is to be a waif, but I am
willing to remain one if I can be a help to you. I am not going
*o mind so much being called a waif in the future. I will re-
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member that you want me to be one, for of course I shall al-
ways have to be one while I stay in the office."
-it seems best for you to stay there," he answered with some
faint appreciation that her spirit of self-sacrifice was too great
for the occasion — too great for her own good — too great for
the development of that so-called "self-reliance" which philan-
thropy affects to cultivate in the minds of the poor — yet had
he not been trying to force from her an acknowledgment of her
dependence on the good intentions of the Association ?
"How difficult it is to preserve just the right attitude toward
the object of our benevolence," he thought; "and how much
more difficult it must be for the object to attain the point of
view acceptable to the philanthropist!"
He felt uncomfortable and hypocritical under Elizabeth's
sweet glance of gratitude ; he took for granted that it expressed
only gratitude. Her air of childlike purity and candor forbade
•any other interpretation, and no other occurred to him. To
distract her thoughts and his own, he rowed her to another
part of the lake, where she was soon busy selecting a variety of
pink water lillies which called from her ardent exclamations
of delight. Never had he seen Elizabeth so free from self-re-
straint, so gaily happy, so much like other pretty young girls
as she now appeared to him — so little like a waif !
As he observed her with a kind of melancholy interest in
which his own pain was not wholly forgotten, he resolved that
this shy, lovely, young girl should have all the chivalrous pro-
tection that he could throw around her, and surely she must
remain in that office under his own watchful gaze, for how else
could he protect her thoroughly? In fact, she had no other
background than that afforded by the Association. It was an
artificial setting for her young life, but she was cut off from
all natural relationships and this was all that was left to her.
Moreover, out of it grew all his rights as her guardian. It was
pleasant to think of himself as her guardian and he was glad
that she had at last accepted the situation as the best one for
her, under the circumstances.
That afternoon, Julian harnessed up the horses and took hi9
mother and Elizabeth to a Sunday school picnic in a neighbor-
ing woods. They sat upon roughly-made plank benches and
listened to the usual singing of hymns, extemporaneous pray-
ers and addresses. The proceedings were tiresome enough to
Julian. The speakers said the same things over and over, and
said them badly. Their phraseology was as loose and ill-fitting
as their clothes, he thought. It was remarkable how badly
country people contrived to dress. He looked around on the
assembly and contrasted them with the civilians he had just
left. If all their clothing were thrown into a heap and each
man were to pick out a suit that fitted him, no doubt in the gen-
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THE CHARITY GIRL 805
eral exchange many would appear to better advantage. That
stout man over yonder, for instance, would look comparatively
well if dressed in his right-hand neighbor's suit, for his own
was unquestionably too small for him.
Julian happened to glance toward the platform and looked
into the familiar, kindly old face of his father's life-long friend
and neighbor, Israel Hilton, who had been speaking for some
minutes and was now looking directly into Julian's eyes. The
old man was giving utterance to the identical thoughts that
were occupying Julian's mind at that moment.
"I do not want to take up your time, friends, with apologies
for my poor speaking. You all know how bad it is ; but you're
used to it like you are to the sight of my Sunday clothes, and
you can make allowances for you know what I am trying to
get at, else you wouldn't have asked me to speak. But when
we have among us a young man who's used to city ways, even
though he's no stranger to any of us, then my tongue is bound
to stumble more than common, and I don't seem to get hold
of any words that fit the idea any more than this old suit, that
lies in the camphor chest all week, fits me when I get into it
for an occasion like this." He looked about him with a pa-
thetic half smile. His flushed, weather-beaten, finely-cut old
face became suddenly illumined. He looked again at Julian, his
blue eyes bright with feeling.
"But I'm done with my foolish apologies ; they're the token of
the love we bear ourselves — we poor old farmers ! Ah ! we're a
selfish, cold-blooded set ! There's no love for humanity in our
hearts. An' right now I'm lookin' into the face of one who
went out from us a few years ago a mere boy, an' made his
way to that great City o' Sin, an' took right holt an' wrestled
with wrong and spread love and joy into human hearts. You
all know who I mean. It's him you want to hear from, not me.
We're all proud of him. We know his goodness is the genuine
article ; for we know he comes by it honestly through his father
an' mother. Step right up here, Julian Endicott! You that
knows how to turn the love of God into the love of man, you
step up here an' tell us old fellows how to get away from the
selfishness of Cain. 'Am I my brother's keeper?' we says to
ourselves. That ain't what Julian says ! Come up here an' let
the beautiful holy light from the good works of the Good
Samaritans stream into our selfish hearts !" With tears in his
eyes the feeble old farmer waved to Julian to ascend the plat-
form and reluctantly Julian obeyed.
He was not embarrassed at the thought of addressing this
rural multitude, for they were old acquaintances from the days
of his early childhood. He stood in awe of none of them. Yet
he hung his head as he faced an audience palpably glowing with
the expectation of hearing noble deeds recounted, an exalted *
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altruism preached to them as a new gospel. He leaped to the
amiable determination that he would not lie to these simple-
minded rustics.
He began to speak quickly, his words coming easily with
gestures natural and simple. Half conscious was he that he
might have made a success of any profession that afforded
scope for his oratorical powers — his mother had always prayed
that he might be a clergyman — why, then, had he chosen the
trade of professional philanthropy? The hateful term was a
drag to his thoughts — nay, it was filling his throat and threat-
ening to choke him. He hardly knew what he was saying, so
filled was he with self-disgust. He came to a stop and his eyes
fell on the upturned, devoted faces of his mother and Elizabeth*
He looked into the face of the young girl and read therein a
poem of tender reverence and gratitude. No speech of hers had
ever been half as articulate as that upward look. It touched and
thrilled his foolish pride, his manly egotism, and then its white
flame of faith burned his soul into truthfulness. So he went on:
"Mr. Hilton has spoken of my vocation in exalted terms.
Well, I am going to tell you the truth about it. In the city,
there are the two extremes of the rich and the poor, as far
apart as the poles. The rich want to help the poor, but they
can't even touch them with the tips of their fingers. Now what
am I ? A connecting link — a creature hired by the rich to ad-
minister the personal touch of which you hear so much cant in
charitable circles. Friends, my part is a humble one! I dis-
tribute another man's bounty with all the Christian grace I
can command. Isn't that a noble vocation? But if I am ever
of any service to humanity I shall owe it to this community in
which I grew up — seeing charity administered by the charitable
themselves and not by hirelings; seeing men judged by their
personal sacrifices and not by the amount of money they con-
tribute to a cause. All my best inspirations come from these
scenes, so do not depreciate your simple lives to mel I do
not know what would become of me if I had not the remem-
brance of them in my heart! I want to be worthy of your
friendship always. This — this will be the light on my path
when I return ! The only light to keep me from straying after
false gods!"
Julian sprang abruptly from the platform to the ground. H«
told his mother in a hurried aside that he was going to look
%fter the horses — it was time to feed them — and he withdrew
into the woods some distance from the crowd, conscious that
he left a mystified and disappointed audience behind him.
After the horses were fed and watered, Julian stood strok-
ing their noses and patting their necks. Suddenly he struck
his hand forcibly against the rough bark of the tree to which
the horses were tied. The action and the hurt relieved the ten-
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THE CHARITY GIRL 807
sion of his thoughts, for he smiled grimly at his bruised hand
and went on stroking the horses' noses.
"Why did I not tell them the truth ? All my zeal for human-
ity is centered in her — in Marian — another man's wife I Good
God ! what a situation ! I wanted to shout it out to the crowd
yonder. I feel as if it were written on my forehead in letters
of fire. How strange that no one knows it! No— not even
she herself ; she shall never know it !"
A band of young people rushed forward and dragged Julian
back with them to partake of lemonade and cake, and to share
their country games. They treated him as if he were a superior
being, which increased his desperate shamefacedness. He was
glad when the time came to hitch the horses to his mother's
wagon and start for home.
The next morning Julian told his mother that he believed
manual labor to be the best cure for an overtaxed brain, and
he plunged into haymaking with something of the zest of his
boyhood days. He put on a blue gingham shirt, drew on over-
alls that he had not worn for years, and pulled on a pair of
farmer's boots in which he could ford a stream without wetting
his feet. Elizabeth eyed with wonder this transformation of
the young secretary into a field hand.
"We farmers look better in our working clothes," he said,
in indifferent response to her shy comments. "It takes a leisure
class to look well in its Sunday suit. In fact, one needs to make
a business of Sunday clothes and wear them every day in the
week to look as well in them as they do in the city." His neat,
Well-fitting civilian's suit seemed to bear a certain relation to
his morbid self-consciousness, his newly attained conviction of
sin. He chose to regard it with scorn as it hung from a nail in
•his bed chamber.
His mother rejoiced at the brownness of his cheeks and the
return of his appetite. When she laid before him the prob-
lems which had been accumulating for his consideration tor
ocveral months he solved them with the same off-hand readi-
ness that had always characterized his judgment of such mat-
ters. It was forever to be relied on ; many a Gordian knot ot
buttermaking, sheepraising, seeding, planting and harvesting
was cut during their homely evening talks. Yet how he knew
all these things so unerringly was one of the mysteries over
which she had long pondered.
The day came for Elizabeth's return to the city, and Julian
and his mother drove with her to the station. Elizabeth's shy-
ness had worn off to the extent of returning a girlish smile for
the gentle smile of the widow. When the latter took posses-
sion of her hand as she sometimes did when they sat side by
side, Elizabeth suffered it to remain and returned the pres-
sure timidly.
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She had been very silent in the carriage and when Julian
lifted her out she turned a cold, pale cheek to his mother, who
kissed her good-bye. Julian called to her to follow him as the
train was in sight. She obeyed, but stopped suddenly to look
back; she hesitated, and in an instant was at the widow's side
with her arms around her neck. Her young heart was as lonely
as the steppes of Russia, but she was used to loneliness. What
spring of feeling within her had given way to cause such pas-
sionate tears ? She was still sobbing when Julian led her away
and placed her on board the train. He was touched, of course,
by her emotion, He returned to his mother as the train moved
slowly off. They both watched it sadly as it vanished with Eliz-
abeth into the distant hills.
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# SOCIALISM ABROAD **
Professor E. Untermann
GERMANY.
Encouraging reports about the propspeets and outcome of the muni-
cipal elections reach us from all parts of the empire. In the Baltic port
of Stettin, Comrade Barz carried his ward with 651 votes against 307.
Even the Friesian Islands in the North Sea, where fishing corporations
crushed the only means of existence available to the population, are
no longer inhabited by loyal subjects. In the noted bathing resort,
Norderney, 221 out of 315 votes were cast for the socialist candidate
for municipal councillor. The prospects of the 17 candidates in 27
election districts of Saxony are good. An interesting illustration of
their tactics is given by the following resolution passed by the Na-
tional Congress of Saxon Social Democrats: "In after-elections, social-
ist electors shall vote for a bourgeois candidate only then, when he
pledged himself to use all parliamentary means in his power for the
abolition of the system of three electoral classes and for the institu-
tion of equal and direct suffrage." The Caxons back up their propa-
ganda by six socialist papers with 80,400 subscribers.
The "organs of safety" arrested in the province of Posen 140 "danger-
ous" characters who distributed pamphlets inviting the workers— to
celebrate Mayday. Two editors of the Berlin "Vorwarts" and the
editors of the "Volkstimme" in Frankfort on the Main and the "Volkfl-
zeitung in Mayence are being prosecuted for the heinous crime of ex-
posing the hollowness of Christian civilization in their comments on
the "Hunnenbriefe" in China.
This work is very effective— for the enlightenment of the people. A
meeting called by the agrarians in Berlin for the purpose of explaining
to the "common people" that they could live cheaper by paying a
higher price for bread charged the discomfited champion of the Junkers
with the mission of delivering a resolution to the Reichstag protesting
against the project of increased taxes on grain.
The "Bund der ArbeitgelberVerbande Berlin's" (Federation of Ber-
lin's Employers' Union) is equally unfortunate in attempting to per-
suade the workers of the identity of capitalistic and proletarian inter-
ests. For though the employers confidently hope that the quietly re-
flecting workers will come to the conclusion that we are in no way
inimical to them, still the Magdeburg- Volkstimme points out that the
Bund wishes to defend Itself against granting to workingmen the right
of creating in factories, shops and other places of work such conditions
as will oppose the rules and regulations given by employers."
The movement forces even such ultra-capitalistic papers as the
"Vossische Zeitung" and "Berliner Borsen Zeitung" to devote leading
articles to it, explaining to their awe-struck readers that "socialism
is no longer as radical as it used to be during the life-time of the old
Kampfhahn (fighting cock) Liebknecht," and that there is "just enough
809
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810 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
radicalism left to draw a very sharp line of separation from the bour-
geois parties."
More significant still, the "Borsen Zeitung" enjoys the following
good laugh at the expense of the clericals: "We have already pointed
out that the socialist victories in the elections for trade councils in
Cologne, hitherto a citadel of clericalism, is extremely unpleas-
ant to the Centrum, because it proves that the dam built by the clergy
for the purpose of obstructing socialism is becoming rather rickety.
This impression is hightened by the »open admission of the clerical
"Coiner Volkzeitung" that the Catholic church cannot successfully
carry on the fight against socialism, at least not alone. The paper
openly confesses that the awe-inspiring number of votes cast by the
socialists not only in the city of Cologne but also in the country—
where the influence of the clergy is still stronger than in the city—
"has caused a very unpleasant surprise" and invites "serious con-
templation."
The quintessence of this serious contemplation is found In the
reflection that "neither the cultivation of church life nor sermons on
social topics are an efficient mode of combatting socialism."
FRANCE.
The strike in Montceau-les-MInes, admittedly grave until a few
days ago, is now peacefully settled. On the first of May it was de-
cided to carry the strike to extremes, to flag the houses in celebration
of the hundredth day of the strike and Mayday, and to decline
the offer of the government to furnish employment for the discharged
men. At the congress of miners, in Lens, resolutions were adopted to
agitate for an eight-hour day, a minimum wage, prud'hommes for
miners, a pension of 2.50 fr. (50c.) per day after 25 years of work, and
recognition of miners' delegates. The resolution gave the government
six months time to satisfy these demands. In case of non-compliance,
a call for a referendum vote on the question of declaring the general
strike was to be issued.
In the meantime, the federation of miners in Montceaules mines
had called for such a vote, with the result that 28,850 were in favor
of a general strike, while 17,603 were against and over 100,000 re-
frained from voting. In consequence the bureau of the federation in
a manifesto recommended not to declare the general strike, but to be
satisfied with the recognition of the federation by the mine-owners
and to resume work.
The general committee of French socialists denounced, after a
long discussion, Millerand's law for compulsory arbitration as "dan-
gerous to the development and interests of the laboring class."
RUSSIA.
Socialism in Russia, though still in its fledgling years, gives the
following evidences of robust development: A Federation of Labor
in Helsingfors represents 40 trade unions with 1,900 members includ-
ing 300 women, publishes a central organ, "Tomies," and has built
a "Maison du Peuple"; unions of Swedish laborers in Finland and of
seamstresses, washer women, bonnet makers and thread spinner are
increasing; disorders occurred in the metal works at Okhta, near
Petersburg, where the laborers refused to work on holiday and set
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SOCIALISM ABROAD 811
fire to the factory; 80,000 men are on strike in different parts of Rus-
sia; riots are taking place in Vyborg and Odessa; the university in
Warsaw is closed until September, and students are demanding a con-
stitution from the Tsar in a monster petition; a widespread conspiracy
was discovered in Poland; 50,000 Mayday pamphlets and 5,000 copies
of the "Spark" and of the "Arbeiterstimme," were distributed by the
Russian Social Democratic Party, the largest amount ever spread by
secret means. The "Federation of Russian Socialists Abroad," issued
10,000 copies of a historical summary of Mayday and its importance
for the proletariat.
By a secret printing office, 3,000 copies of the Laborer's Review,
containing articles by Bebel, Kautsky, Vandervelde and Axelrod, writ-
ten especially for this number, were distributed. A manifesto pub-
lished by the Polish Social Democracy party, closed with these words:
Polish Workers! Your sufferings, your fate are the same as those
of the Prussian comrades. Your fight and its goal must be the same
as theirs. Let the Polish students indulge in no supernatural dreams
of a Polish national resurrection. We, the Polish laborers, our faces
toward the living future, extend our hands to the Russian laborers
with fraternal welcome. Let them advance on their chosen path
boldly and with joyous courage, and let them be assured that the
Polish proletariat will not desert them in their fight. Hurrah for
the political brotherhood of Polish and Russian laborers! Down with
Tzarism! Hurrah for the constitution!
JAPAN.
Japanese socialists, in their moulting process from Utopia to science,
still swear allegiance to the emperor and sympathize with "Judges
and public prosecutors striking for higher wages." But at the same
time they are holding mass meetings, demanding effective labor legis-
lation and agitating for universal suffrage. In a public meeting held
by the socialist club in Tokio, Comrades S. Katayama, editor of the
"Labor World," and Iso Abe, author of "Social Problems and their
Solution," were nominated delegates to the international bureau in
Brussels. The powerful "Railway Engineers' Union" resolved that
its members should study labor problems and make "socialism their
ultimate goal."
The "Labor World" publishes its front page in English. The other
eight pages are filled with Japanese text and illustrations of the
Japanese laborer's life and the sufferings of the proletarian. S. Kat-
ayama gives in the last issue a heartrending description of the con-
dition of the girls in the silk spinneries in the prefecture of Suwa
Nagano. These girls are recruited from the provinces by agents who
practically succeed In inducing farmers to "sell their daughters for a
pittance to be worked like machines and ruined morally and physi-
cally." Fifteen thousand girls, surrounded by ditches and fences, which
they are not permitted to cross during the time of their contract of
two years, work from 16 to 18 hours per day for 10 to 25 cents. Out
of these wages they must pay board, lodging and doctor bills, but
"during the contract no money is given to the girls under any cir-
cumstances. This is to prevent the girls from running away from
the factory; and any necessary articles are supplied by the factory
at extreme prices."
Public Lectures were held in different places on the following
subjects: Comrade KawakamI, 'The History of the Socialist Move-
ment"; Comrade Iso Abe, "The Socialist Doctrine"; Comrade Toyosa&i,
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"N
812 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
"Immediate Necessary Reforms"; Comrade Mural, "Reply to Criticisms
of the Socialist Party"; Comrade Katayama, "Strength and Future of
the Socialist Party."
SPAIN.
The community of interest, not between capital and labor, but
between capital and capitalistic government, was vividly illustrated by
the recent strike in Madrid and Barcelona. The traction employes in
Madrid and the members of trade unions in Barcelona struck for more
humane conditions of life, and the government promptly replied to
the demands of the proprietors for protection and maintenance of "law
and order." The cry for bread and health was answered with bullets,
bayonets and sabers. Helpless women were killed and many seriously
wounded. The capitalist papers, while denouncing in lurid terms the
derailing of cars and the stoning of convents, have nothing but praise
for the murderers of the suffering proletarians.
Naturally, socialism is growing under such conditions. The mem-
bership of trade unions increased from 3,355 in 1889, to 29,383 in
March, 1901. These unions, according to the "Nueva Era," are in close
touch with the socialists. Their "Union General" holds its congresses
at the same time and place as the socialist party.
Spanish socialists issued a manifesto shortly before the recent
elections, calling on all socialists to nominate candidates and recom-
mending an uncompromising attitude against the offer of a coalition
with the radical wing of the republicans. The elections were hotly
contested. The victory of Comrade Pablo Iglesias was prevented only
by the trick of stuffing the ballot box with more votes than the number
of voters in his district. One socialist candidate was, nevertheless,
elected. Riots took place during the election and one socialist candi-
date was shot
BELGIUM.
The Luttich Congress of Belgian Social Democrats surprised the
government with the following Mayday present: A demand for a
republic and the abolition of the senate, backed up by the threat
of street riots and a general strike, summed up in the laconic, but
eloquent, ultimatum: Universal Suffrage or Revolution!
"Le Peuple" comments on the situation in France in the following
manner: "What we must emphasize from now on is the gravity of
the social situation. It is not simply a question of the particular
conflict in Montecau-les-Mines, nor of a beautiful movement of soli-
darity The danger is more imminent. If we correctly
interpret the action of the French miners, it marks an Impatience,
a fever, a longing to cut short the suffering. ... As yet they
are on the legitimate defense. But who can give assurance that they
will not call to the attack tomorrow? The conservative politicians
who think only of their appetites may neglect these symptoms. But
if the introduction of extensive democratic uneasiness Is not hastened
by all nations, the hour of reform will pass by, and the period of
revolution will suddenly be inaugurated."
BULGARIA.
Local branches in all the towns and in many villages, numerous
labor organizations, 8 seats in the legislature wrested from the com-
bined bourgeois forces at the elections in February, 1901; this is the
record ot JO years of Social Democratic activity in Bulgaria,
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THE WORLD OF LABOR
By Max S. Hayes
Some more important inventions and discoveries are announced.
Dr. Geo. Randall, Lowell, Mass., produces artificial coal from min-
erals abundantly distributed throughout the earth. Tests have been
made of the fuel in city fire engines and in smelting iron ore in
large quantities. From 17 to 21 per cent more heat is produced than
by soft coal.— E. J. Hoffman, of Omaha, claims to have a process
whereby ordinary earth, to which is added crude petroleum and
two other Ingredients, will burn better than pine knots. The new
fuel can be produced for $2.50 a ton.— A Salt Lake man, named Hays,
discovered a process by which a quart of oil will produce a light
greater and purer than any known, equal to 700 candle power, for
37 hours, and when turned into heat and power a small tank is suffi-
cient to run a steamer across the ocean. Hays is poor and five capi-
talists bought the invention for $10,000, and then turned around and
sold it to the Standard Oil Co. for $5,000,000. The Standard people
will not place the new discovery on the market to any extent, as it
would knock their enormous profits out of petroleum.— In California
night-rider cowboys are being displaced on large ranches by enormous
searchlights.— In the same state the solar motor, long sought by sci-
entists, has been successfully developed. Near Los Angeles a ten-
horse power engine is being driven ten hours a day by means of heat
secured by attracting the rays of the sun through an umbrella -shaped
device upon a long, slender boiler. "The heat accumulated in the
boiler is immense, and the energy developed suffices to work a pump
that raises water enough to irrigate 300 acres of orange land."— The
billions of tons of cotton seeds piled up in the South are soon to be
converted into paper by a $5,000,000 combine. It is claimed that pulp
can be manufactured from cotton seeds by a new process for $25 a
ton, or one-third the cost of wood pulp, and that the paper will remain
white and never turn yellow, as paper made from wood pulp does.—
A Swedish inventor has discovered a process by which steel can be
produced by electricity, and already a thousand tons have been turned
out by successful experiments.— The rubber trust is discharging sten-
ographers in its large oflSces by introducing phonographs.— The tele-
graphone is a success. An experiment recently made between New
York and Chicago has proven satisfactory. You may soon be able
to talk Into a telephone in the latter city, have your words recorded on
a wax cylinder in the metoroplis and reeled off at the leisure of the
receiver, that is, if you have the price.— In the Elgin watch works an
automatic machine assists to ship goods, and 18 girls have been
discharged.— A Philadelphia firm advertises a painting machine, oper-
ated by two men, that is warranted to do the work of 16 men.— An
automatic printing press feeder has been invented that will take
anything from French folio to 19-point card board, and has a speed
Of 5,000 per hour. Human press feeders will have to get out.— A
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814 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
new cigarmakiDg machine Is announced. It can be built for $125,
weighs less than 400 pounds, occupies space of 2x4 feet, has 14 dis-
tinct operations, and a two-horse power motor can propel ten of the
machines.
Social Democrats of San Francisco are gathering sufficient names
to a petition to submit to a referendum vote (as they have a right
under the new charter) the question whether the municipality shall
furnish work for the unemployed, and also build a labor headquar-
ters.— Social Democrats of Texas are wrathy. Election returns of all
other parties except the S. D. P. were accounted for by the Secretary
of State, and now the latter is charged with having deliberately re-
turned the Socialistic vote in the "scattering" columns, where the total
!• given as nearly 84,000, a surprising showing.— Ella Wheeler Wilcox
is a new convert to socialism, and is writing articles and poems in
behalf of the cause.— The Socialist is the name of a new paper at
Kansas City, Mo.; the Social Economist at Bonham, Tex.; the Broth-
erhood of Man at Navassa, Tex.; Avanta, Italian weekly, 229 E. 95th
street, New York.— Secretary Butscher announces that the organization
of new branches goes steadily forward, and that Job Harrman, of New
York, and Max S. Hayes, of Cleveland, have been elected, by refen-
endum vote, American secretaries of the International Socialist
Bureau, formed by the last World's Labor Congress, which has head-
quarters at Brussells, Belgium.— Socialist party of Chicago, with a
dues-paying membership of 1,200, voted to join the S. D. P.— Matthew
Maguire, S. L. P. vice-presidential candidate in 1896, and Wm. Glanz.
active New Jersey worker, withdrew from the De Leon party, and
9 former German section at Providence Joined the S. D. P. Mr.
Hickey, De Leon's right bower, and about a score of others, were
expelled from the old S. L. P., and there is now a bitter fight on
between the few followers of the professor on the Pacific coast-
Meanwhile both branches of the S. D. P. and various independent
state and local branches are looking forward to the national conven-
tion that is to be held this year for the purpose of uniting into a
homogeneous body all Socialist factions. A score or more of speakers
are in the field in many states and report good meetings and great
interest among the people in the cause of socialism as a rule.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court has decided that labor unions have
no right to force apprentices into an organization or prevent an em-
ployer from hiring non-union men. The injunction of a lower court
was made permanent— Chicago Appellate Court has decided that
strikers have no right to "picket" shops where strikes are on for the
purpose of dissuading non-union men from working. In the same
state (Illinois) a court has handed down a decision legalizing the
blacklist, declaring that employers had the right to combine to protect
themselves from those who are inimical to their interests. This is
probably the first decision of this kind in the United States, but is
only another step in capitalism's movement to persecute the wage-
working class and make unions helpless.— Brewers of New York have
been injunctioned from Interfering with a non-union concern or its
scabs.— South Dakota Supreme Court has declared the referendum law
unconstitutional.— Attorney-General of Connecticut declared that an
eight-hour law is unconstitutional in that state, and when the eight-
hour bill came up for passage in the Legislature it was defeated by
160 to 39 votes.— Chicago unionists report that Illinois Legislature
turned down all labor bills.— These are some of the fruits of electing
capitalistic judges and law-mafcers and supporting the old parties,
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THE WORLD OF LABOR 815
During the past month union officials representing 200,000 workers,
held a conference in Pittsburg and took preliminary steps to unite all
the metal-working trades with the avowed purpose of making war
on the billion-dollar trust. Another meeting will be held in Chicago
in July to complete arrangements.— The iron and steel workers' strike
at Mckeesport, Pa., against the big combine, resulted In a temporary
truce being patched up, and trouble is looked for when the Amalga-
mated Association presents its wage scale for recognition after its
contention in July.— The strike of the engineers on the lakes has
been compromised, the billionaire octopus having made concessions.—
The situation in the anthracite region is not much improved. The
charge continues to be made, and is not denied, that Morgan's agents
are forcing local strikes and persecuting active unionists so that the
barons will not be compelled to recognize the union. Labor men
who are watching developments are becoming of the opinion that a
strike and lockout of tremendous proportions is coming, in which the
United States Steel Corporation will attempt to destroy all unions
that now harrass that combine.
A Philadelphia daily says the mines are now so thoroughly monop-
olized that the managers boldly declare that whenever a local strike
takes place the mines will be closed and others will be opened at
different points.— Watch case manufacturers have combined and noti-
fied employes to withdraw from their union or quit their jobs.— Chicago
contractors have declared that If the building trades organize a new
central body and start sympathy strikes the former lockout will be
renewed.— Employers of Delaware are reported as having combined
for the purpose of destroying the unions in that state.— The new cigar
trust kept hammering at wages in Blnghamton, N. Y., until those
who formerly received $10 to $12 per week, now are offered but $4
a week, and a strike is the result In its, Passaic, N. J., factory the
trust compelled girls to make cigars for 25 cents a hundred, and now
there's another strike on. Possibly the working people are learning
that there is also a class struggle on.
In March and April about $450,000,000 of capital was trustified.
It would require several pages to record all the new combines that
have been formed and the absorptions that have taken place in the
last month. Concentration in railroads, coal, iron and steel, tobacco,
etc., continues at a rapid rate. Men who are on the inside figure it
out that Morgan and Rockefeller and their associates now control over
$7,500,000,000 of capital, and of this vast sum Mr. J. Brisbane Walker,
of the Cosmopolitan, estimates that the three houses of Rothschild,
Rockefeller and Morgan alone control about three billion of capital in
this country. The little middle class fellows, who still imagine that
they will become swaggering plutocrats some day, will please take
notice. They had better Invest their few dollars in Socialist literature.
Cleveland trade unionists have smoked out an institution called
the Manufacturers' Information Bureau which, they allege, had scores
of spies in labor organizations in different parts of the country who
furnished Cleveland and Chicago officers with inside information, and
which was in turn sent to employers. Acting on the discovery of
the Cleveland unionists, the spies have been pretty thoroughly weeded
out of the organizations. That the lists of names of spies and em-
ployers obtained by the unionists is authentic is undoubted, as they
were taken out of the bureau's office.— Since the expose In Cleveland,
similar spying institutions and individuals are being unmasked in
New York, Pittsburg, Massachusetts and other parts of the country.
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816 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
C. L. U. of Flint Mich., is another local central body that has
wheeled into line with progressive labor organizations, having adopted
as part of its constitution a declaration that "we regard it as the
sacred duty of every honorable laboring man to sever his affiliation
with all political parties of the capitalists, and to devote his energy
and attention to the organization of his trade and labor union, and
the concentration of all labor unions into one solid body for the pur-
pose of assisting each other in all struggles— political and Industrial—
to resist every attempt of the ruling classes directed against our liber-
ties, and to extend our fraternal hand to the workers of our land and
to all nations of the globe that struggle for the same independence."
The battle of the machinists for the nine-hour day and increased
wages has begun, and at this writing it looks as though the men will
win their fight, though in some localities it may become one of endur-
ance, as thousands have already secured the concessions demanded.
The machinists have the solid moral and financial backing of all the
trades unionists of the country, and if they win without the loss of
too much time and money other trades may follow in the movement
for a shorter workday. It may be added that at no time in the history
of organized labor in America has there been such thorough harmony
and unconquerable determination to make progress for the immediate
betterment of those who toil.
The silk weavers' strike at Scranton, Pa., which was directed by
Mother Jones, and which has been pending for many months, was
won by the workers, while the strike at Paterson, N. J., was lost,
owing largely to the fact that the courts issued an injunction against
the women and children, and the police assaulted them for attempting
to persuade scabs to refuse to work. "Mother," besides organizing for
the unions, is now putting in some spare time in forming unions of
domestic servants.
Employers of San Francisco combined and publicly declare that
they intend to fight all demands of trade unions. The sum of $50,000
was contributed to a fund to be used against organized labor.— The
National Civic Federation held another session in New York and
adopted a long address to the people to the effect that it is now
prepared to restore brotherly love between capital and labor wherever
and whenever inharmonious strains are heard. The Federation ought
to begin business in 'Frisco at once.
Building trades unions of New York have been discussing the
advisability of taking independent political action. One of the car-
penters' unions resolved that it is time wasted to start another labor
party, and that those workers who were seriously desirous of cutting
adrift from the old parties and doing something for their class should
join the Social Democratic party.
It is estimated that a million sales' agents of various kinds, and
other middlemen, have been displaced in the last four years owing to
trustification of industry. The claim is made that the million-dollar
iron and steel combine will alone save $80,000,000 a year by abolishing
middlemen and pocketing profits that formerly went to them.
After 3,000 militiamen were called out, several hundred Pinkertons
Imported, several hundred more deputies sworn in, several hundred
scabs brought to town, four Jives blotted out, and thousands of dollars'
worth of property destroyed, the big street railway strike in Albany,
N. Y., was compromised.
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**
BOOK REVIEWS
a»
Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology.
Jacques Loeb, M. D. 6. P. Putnam's Sons. 809 pp. $2.00.
Up until a few years ago the anthropomorphic and theological method
of thought reigned supreme in the world of psychology. Long after
the Ptolmaic system of astronomy and the "special creation" hypothe-
sis in biology had been laid aside, the mind was still treated as a
world apart from natural law. The brain was partitioned off into
centers of imagination, passion, emotion, etc., with the "will" reigning
over all. This will had a sort of staff of nerve centers or ganglia that
were supposed to attend to such minor matters as the monarch mind
did not care to concern itself with. Now just as the aristocratic
"great man idea" in history has given place to a democratic conception
of social forces, so a similar transformation in the field of psychology
has resulted from the application of the principles of scientific investi-
gation to the study of the mind. The work of Wundt, Ladd, Tichener
and others has shown that the comparative historical, inductive method
was here as elsewhere infinitely superior in results to the intuitive
mysticism that had previously been followed.
The work of Dr. Loeb is perhaps the most exhaustive study in ac-
cordance with these methods that has yet been made, and its testi-
mony overturns a host of old time hobbies. He first takes up the
question of the work of the ganglions which were supposed to be
minor centers of a sort of "consciousness," and to have charge of the
instinctive actions. But many of these so-called involuntary and in-
stinctive actions are found to take place in plants, which have no
ganglions and will take place in many of the lower forms of animal
life after the ganglions have been removed. By means of a mass of
experiments it is shown that these Instinctive and involuntary actions
are due either to chemical or "tropic" reactions, or both. Almost all
forms of life are compelled to orient themselves in a certain relation to
the force of gravity, or light or electricity or mechanical irritation^ A
plant always sends it leaves towards the light and its roots into the
earth, and this is but another phase of the same force that sends the
moth into the flame, drives certain larvae to the top branches of the
trees on which to feed, causes earth worms to always bury themselves,
and the female fly to lay her eggs only on the particular form of car-
rion which will hatch and nourish them. These movements are generally
produced by chemical reactions taking place in the medium with which
the animal or organ is surrounded. This is especially true of the "in-
voluntary functions" of the higher animals. For instance it is found
that a certain chemical solution of which common salt is an element
will cause muscular tissue to contract rhythmatically. Testing this on
portions of the heart tissue and on detached hearts of certain animals
it was shown that it would inevitably cause such contractions, or heart
817
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818 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
beats, and on injecting it into the human blood vessels it was found
that it had the effect of causing a resumption of such contractions or
beats when for any reason they had temporarily ceased. It was thi»
experiment which led the "yellow journals" to state that Dr. Loeb had
discovered salt to be the "elixir of life."
It is found possible in this way to account for a vast mass of activ-
ities throughout the animal world. The migration of birds, the conceal-
ment of many animals, and a vast mass of movements which have
been ascribed either to "intelligence" or ganglionic supervision are-
shown to be simple chemical, physical or galvanic reactions such as are
' common to all protoplasmic matter. Anything that prevents the satis-
faction of such instincts cannot but cause pain and discomfort to the
organism affected. "The analysis of instincts from a purely physiolog-
ical point of view will ultimately furnish the data for a scientific
ethics. Human happiness is based upon the possibility of a natural
and harmonious satisfaction of the instincts. One of the most import-
ant instincts is usually not even recognised as such, namely, the instinct
of workmanship. Lawyers, criminologists and philosophers frequently
imagine that only want makes man work. This is an erroneous view.
We are instinctively forced to be active in the same way as ants or
bees. The Instinct of workmanship would be the greatest source of
happiness if it were not for the fact that our present social and econ-
omic organization allows only a few to satisfy this instinct" The clos-
ing chapters of the work are devoted to a consideration of the phe-
nomena of "associative memory" by which term the author designates
those functions of the cerebral hemispheres and perhaps some other
portions of the brain, which are ordinarily referred to as the will, con-
sciousness, the ego, etc. It is pointed out that this is a function which
is not common to the whole animal kingdom, but only to a comparative-
ly small portion of it, and its existence in any definite species can only
be determined by experiment It is pointed out that any rational
psychology must consist simply of an analysis of the laws governing^
associative memory, and that it cannot consist as it always has in the-
past In a priori speculations on the functions of an imaginary entity
designated as "the will," "ego," or any other fanciful name. In place-
of the old hierarchial system with the brain directing a series of gang-
lionic lieutenants, which are in turn overseeing certain muscles, veins,
and other organs, we have a large number of segmental reflexes, in
which the ganglion forms but a specialized bit of protoplasm for the
transmission of impulses. Psychology, in short, is democratized and
transferred from the realm of metaphysics into that of science.
The Politics of the Nazerene, or What Jesus Said to do. O. D. Jones.
Published by the author at Edina, Mo. Paper, 208 pp. 60 cents.
This book is a rather extreme type of a class of books which could
be produced nowhere save in America. In any other country a man
who was to write on socialism would have thought it worth while to
know something of his subject, but here every man believes himself
capable of supplying the present and future literature of socialism
without the slighest knowledge of what has been done before. And
so we have in America a whole series of books combining the most
contradictory characteristics. They generally begin with the French
Bights of Man and Rosseau's Social Contract, but as their authors are-
often totally ignorant of even the existence of these documents, they
generally give as their authority for their sentiments the Declaration
of Independence. On this position, always the basic one of competition
and the rallying point of the capitalist system they attempt to erect
~"\
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ROOK BJS VIEWS 819
the socialist superstructure. Their knowledge of socialism is of that
general indefinite, contradictory form that has trickled down through
•capitalist sources into the common mind, and has been greatly dis-
torted by the medium through which it passed. So it has been with
the author of the book before us. For him, Man, Engete, Liebknecht,
La&alle, Kautsky, Hyndman, F'erri and the host of others who have
.given their lives to take socialism from the realm of dreams and place
it on a solid basis of fact and scientific law, have never lived. He
has a little Fourierism which has drifted down to him through Bellamy,
more of the French Encyclopedists that has come via Jefferson and the
-small capitalist class of the early days in America, combined with some
glimmerings of the new social interpretation of Christianity, and this
Is all mixed up with numerous individual vagaries and denunciations of
-some mythical Individual whom he designates as a "British Jew Tory,"
.and covered over with a mass of Bryan-Democratic anti-Imperialism
and "free silverism." As a sample of the psychological workings and
make-up of the minds of thousands of American citizens, to whom the
socialist propaganda must be presented, the book is interesting.
Further than this it is hard to say much concerning it
The Nineteenth Century, An Utopian Retrospect. Havelock Ellis.
Small, Maynard & Co. Cloth, uncut edges, 166 pp. $1.25.
A brilliant criticism and satire with nothing constructive. Some idea
of the style of the work can be gained from the following passages:
"One can imagine with what immense satisfaction the English and
allied races who had pillaged, slaughtered, even exterminated, the
most feeble and fragile peoples in all quarters of the globe carried with
them a gospel which bade men, on pain of eternal damnation, never to
resent being robbed and always to turn the cheek to the smiter." Of
newspapers the author says: "In the nineteenth century it had frankly
become the tool of the capitalist to do what they would with. Having
been first established to sell news to its readers it proceeded to use the
news as a mere bait and sold its readers." Of education, it is
observed: "It still consisted of an acquaintance with the strange and
indigestible knowledges with which they stuffed their children, and
nowise in any acquaintance with the nature of the children whom they
thus miscellaneously and indiscriminately stuffed." The author
makes fun of the worship of mechanical progress, and in general con-
trives to produce a book that will make the reader ashamed of the
society in which he lives.
Dawn-Thought, by Wm. Lloyd. Maugus Press. Wellesley Hills, Mass.
Cloth, gilt top, uncut edges, illuminated initials; 197 pp. $1.25. Also
In plain cloth at $1.00, and paper at 50 cents.
This is a series of connected observations clustering about the
"dawn-thought" that "absorption of the individual into the divine did
not mean annihilation, but the contrary in the extreme sense— that it
was the arriving at real, full-grown, complete and conscious individ-
uality impossible before." With this pantheistic conception as a central
thought there is much philosophizing in a great variety of fields. The
whole is mystical, and while interesting, can scarcely be said to con-
tribute much either to philosophic thought or to the solution of the
social problems. Nevertheless it is one of a multitude of signs of
social unrest that is today stirring every field of thought and action.
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X
880 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
The Reformers' Year Book. Joseph Edwards, Editor and Publisher.
Wallasey, Cheshire, England. One Shilling.
This is the name under which the well-known "Labour Annual" will
appear from now on. The present number is up to the high standard
of former years. It contains a most exhaustive summary of the various
phases of the labor and reform movement of England and America (the
latter prepared by Leonard D. Abbott), a list of all the more prominent
social workers of England with addresses and a shorter one of
Americans.
Rumblings, Being a Compilation of Calamity Howls from the Old Party
Press As It Feels the Icy Fingers of the Trust Closing About Its
Throat. J. A. Wayland. Girard, Kas. Paper; 25 pp., 5 cents.
A valuable* little collection of clippings from the capitalist press on
the trust question.
BOOKS RECEIVED
The "Life" Booklets. By Ralph Waldo Trine. The Greatest Thing
'Ever Known. Every Living Creature, Character-Building, Thought
Power. Cloth, 16 mo., 35 cents each; the set, $1.00. New York: Thomas
Y. Crowell & Co. 1901.
Labor. Emile Zola. Harper. 604 pp. $1.50. Will be reviewed ex-
tensively in July number.
Home Cyclopedia of Popular Medical and Social Science. Edward
B. Foote, M. D. 1225 pp. $2.00.
The Anatomy of Misery. John Coleman Kenworthy. Small, May-
nard & Co. Ill pp. $1.00.
Poems of the New Time. Miles Menander Dawson. Alliance Pub-
lishing Co. 169 pp.
The Procession of the Planets. Franklin H. Heald. Published
by the author. Paper 93 pp. $1.00.
Now and Then. Frederick Kraft Socialistic Co-Operative Pub-
listiing Association. Paper 30 pp. 10 cents.
AMONG THE PERIODICALS
The North American Review has a series of articles on "Industrial
and Railroad Consolidations" that are attracting wide-spread attention.
The opening one by Russel Sage is a condemnation of monopolies and a
defense of competition. He declares that "The chief owners of the
Standard Oil business have grown so enormously wealthy that in their
individual as well as their corporate capacity, they dominate wherever
they choose to go." In view of this fact it sounds rather laughable to
hear him warning the trust magnates that "the people once aroused are
more powerful than the railroad combinations," especially as he sees
nothing to do but to "remain content with the old fashioned system of
nonest competition, under which we have grown great as a nation and
prosperous as a people." J. J. Hill follows Mr. Sage on "Their advan-
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BOOK REVIEWS 831
tages to the community." He is ve'ry bitter against "middlemen" who
are "mere leeches sucking sustenance from the business body without
giving anything in return," but does not tell what service is rendered by
stockholders. Mr. Hill, in common with the remainder of the writers
reckons value on "earning capacity", and denies the existence of
"watered stock" where It is still possible to extract sufficient value from
the workers to pay dividends. All the defenders of trusts declare their
love for the laborer and several of them point out the ease with which
the laborer can become a profit sharer by buying trust stocks. Just
what the results of such purchase are was explained In this depart-
ment for January in the review of an article by Prof. Meade of
Pennsylvania University, and the reader is also referred to that ar-
ticle for a refutation of the ridiculously juggled statistics furnished
by Charles R. Flint in his article. All the writers are profuse in their
love for the worklngmen and are sure that the trust will be be very
good to them, all of which can be taken with a grain of salt.
John Klmberly Mumftrd in The World's Work, makes a contribu-
tion to the study of the eastern question in a discussion of "Russia's
Advance on India." All Persia has been more or less "Russified."
Roads have been built, Russian costume introduced, "but behind all,
dominant over all, not to be overlooked or forgotten, Is Force. Every
third man you meet is In a uniform of some sort" By alternately bul-
lying, cajoling, assisting, stealing, by diplomacy and force Russia has
made a semi-circle of her possessions around India and now stands
ready to rush in upon it from all sides. An article on "Breeding New
Wheats" tells of the remarkable work being done at the Minnesota
Agricultural College, which promises to Immensely increase the wheat
crop of the world in the near future.
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SOCIALIST TACTICS
For a half century socialists have pointed out the Inevitable evolu-
tion of the competitive system toward monopoly. Libraries have been
ransacked and Industrial facts collected from every corner of the
world to prove the criminal wastefulness and brutality of the compet-
itive struggle. The main effort was directed toward the demonstration
of the desirability and possibility of concentrated industry. Today this
stage is behind us. Evolution, ever jealous of waste, Is abolishing
competition as the dominant force in industry, and replacing it with
monopoly, and already the process is well on toward completion. But
the instability of the monopoly stage is granted from the beginning,
and the feeling is everywhere gaining ground that it will be succeeded
by some form of cooperation.
The task of the socialist agitator and educator has changed with
these conditions. He has no longer to meet the objections of the
defender of competition. He can leave that task to the trust organizer.
He does not even need to spend much energy in demonstrating the
impossibility of continuous monopoly. His task is now mainly con-
structive. Time has justified his logic and facts have demonstrated
his arguments. But while social evolution has thus justified the
premises of socialist philosophy, experience has also placed beyond
question many points in socialist tactics. Just as twenty years ago it
was still possible to soberly maintain that the small producer was a
permanent and dominant factor in industry, just so It was also pos-
sible at that time for many persons calling themselves socialists to
dispute the advisability of adnering to the principle of the class strug-
gle In the formation of a socialist political party. Until very recently
there was a large middle class composed of small producers, combin-
ing the diverse functions of producer and exploiter In the same indi-
viduals. It was always hoped that this class might be brought to
•espouse the cause of socialism if only some concessions were made to
their prejudices or their interests. Today the miserable remnants of
this class have lost all political and economic significance. The over-
whelming defeat of Bryan testified to their political bankruptcy, just
as every newly formed trust is a testimonial to their Industrial Impo-
tence. To build further hopes upon the prospect of their support as a
class is foolish. The contest of the future must be between those who,
868
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EDITORIAL 89*
through Intellectual comprehension of social development or pressure
of economic necessity, have allied themselves with the producers of
wealth, and, on the other hand, those whom Intellectual blindness or
economic interests have allied to the cause of exploitation. This is the
class struggle,— a fact, not a theory, which by its very existence de-
termines political tactics, and to argue as to its advisability, or ballot
as to its adoption is as silly as a similar argument or ballot upon the
theory of gravitation or the Copernician astronomy. From this fact it
follows as an indisputable deduction that when economic evolution has
prepared the way for cooperative production and distribution, while
the means of social control are still in the hands of the exploiters, that
the energies of socialists must be concentrated upon the organisation
of the producing class into a single unified political party for the pur-
pose of capturing the powers now in the hands of their opponents.
The greatest service which can be done to capitalism at this time Is to
.either confuse the issue or divide the forces of the politically organ-
ized workers. Tet Just at the time when it seemed that previous-
divisions were about to disappear, there are signs that an effort will
be made to confuse both issue and tactics by the creation of a new
party with a pjatform made up of concessions to this worthless and
decaying middle class. It is openly announced that at the Social and
Economic Conference to be held at Detroit the first of July an effort
will be made to form a new socialist party. However good may be
the intentions behind this movement any such attempt at this time
would be little less than criminal. Such a party could never become
anything more than a plaything of capitalist politicians, a bait for un-
conscious workingmen, an obstacle in the road to any genuine ad-
vance. Economic evolution has progressed to the point where there
is no room for a political party neither clearly socialist nor clearly
capitalist. The class to which such a party would appeal, the inter-
ests that it would represent are now historical, not existent. Ninety-
five per cent of the active workers for clear cut socialism are already
identified with one of the existing socialist parties. However sincere
unaffiliated socialists may be they have never -shown any great
cohesive power. Under these conditions there is but one thing for any-
one whose economic interests or intellectual comprehension has led to
accept the principles of socialism, and that is to unite with one of the
existing socialist parties and then work for the absorption of that party
in the higher synthesis of a unified socialist movement composed of
all those who accept the principles of international socialism.
We have Just received the following letter from "Mother Jones/*'
which we must again offer In place of the promised article. We feel
sure that our readers will appreciate the reason for the delay:
"Dear Comrades: I owe you an apology for not writing to you
before. You know I had a strike of 4,000 children on my hands for
three months and could not spare a moment. If that strike was lost
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824 INTERNA TIONAL SOCIALIST RE VIE W
it meant untold oppression for these little helpless things. They came
out victorious and gave their masters a good hammering. I could not
write a thing for June, but will for July.
I have had a very hard winter's work, but have done just as much
for socialism as if I were writing articles. One very cheering feature
is that the cause is growing everywhere. I have been landing plenty
of literature in the hands of the boys."
A mail car containing several of last issue, addressed to California
subscribers, was burned and the contents destroyed. We have no
means of knowing exactly which numbers were lost and so must wait
for complaints before replacing them. If any of the California readers
have not yet received their May number, and will notify us to that
effect, we will gladly send another copy.
Owing to sickness and overwork on his lectures in New York, Prof*
Herron was unable to supply matter for the department on "Socialism
and Religion," but the department will be a regular feature of future
numbers as of the past ones.
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PUBLISHERS' DEPARTMENT
With this June number, the Inter-
national Socialist Review completes its
flret year. What we have done in that
year is shown by the table of contents
printed with this number. It is more
than we ventured to promise when we
began. What we shall do during the
year to come will depend on the extent
to which our comrades and friends the
world over continue and Increase their
support: We feel safe in promising at
least that the second year of the Re-
view will be an advance on the first
year.
If your subscription began with the
first number it has now expired, and
we hope to receive your dollar for the
second year by an early mall. We
propose to make the magazine well
worth a dollar a year and we shall
offer no premiums on renewals. We
shall, however, offer every possible in-
ducement to our present subscribers
to obtain new subscriptions, for the
growth of our work depends almost
wholly upon the number of new sub-
scriptions we can secure.
To any subscriber sending 1 11.00 with
the name of a new subscriber for one
year we will send his choice of the
following:
1. A year's subscription to the Li-
brary of Progress, quarterly. This in-
cludes Socialist Songs with Music, al-
ready published; Vandervelde's Col-
lectivism, nearly ready, and two other
numbers to be announced later and
to appear August 15 and November 15.
2. The first 36 numbers of the Pocket
Library of Socialism, including the 27
numbers already published and the
next 'nine numbers as published from
month to month.
3. Any book or books PUBLISHED
BY US to the amount of $1.00 at ad-
vertised prices, we paying postage.
Please note particularly that the pre-
miums do not belong to the new sub-
scriber but to the one who secures
the subscription. You can, of course,
send in any number of new subscrip-
tions and claim a premium for each.
The April number of the Review, on
pages 669-672, gave full details of the
co-operative plan on which our social-
ist literature is published. Since that
number went to press we have re-
ceived subscriptions for twenty addi-
tional shares, giving us representatives
at the following new points: Denver,
Colo.; St. Augustine, Fla.; Macon, Ga.;
Grand Ledge, Mich.; Seattle, Wash.;
Bristol, Wis.; Revelstoke, British Co-
lumbia.
Stockholders in this company have
the privilege of buying our five-cent
books at two cents a copy, $1.00 a hun-
dred, or $8.00 a thousand, expressage
included; our ten-cent books at five
cents each or $3.50 a hundred, express-
age included; our other paper books
at 50 per cent discount, expressage in-
cluded, and our cloth books at 40 per
cent discount, when we pay express-
age, or 50 per cent when sent at the
expense of the purchaser. We have
just concluded arrangements by which
we can supply our stockholders with
most of the socialist books of other
publishers at 20 per cent discount
when we prepay charges, or 30 per
cent if the books are sent at the ex-
pense of the purchaser.
895
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INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
The current receipts of our publish-
ing: business are enough to pay its cur-
rent expenses. The money received
from the sale of stock is used to en-
large our work by publishing the new
books urgently needed in the socialist
movement. Our new translation (the
first ever published in English) of
Liebknecht's Life of Marx will be
ready by the time this issue of the
Review reaches its readers. Vander-
velde's Collectivism is now in the
printers' hands and will be ready
about June 20. Prof. Untermann'S
translation of Engels' great work on
the Origin of the Family is well under
way and the prompt subscription of
twenty more shares of stock will ena-
able us to publish it some time in July.
Understand that we do not ask our
comrades to assist our general work
at the expense of their local work. On
the contrary, the investment of $10.00
with us wijl be a direct help to the
local work of every city from which a
share is taken, for it will enable the
comrades to obtain their socialist lit-
erature at prices far below what could
have been offered without our system
of co-operation.
The rapid increase in the demand for
socialist literature will soon make our
stock a good investment as a mere
matter of business for any bookseller
or book agent, but we hope that
enough party members will subscribe
to keep the future control of the enter-
prise in socialist hands.
We prefer as a rule to sell only one
share to each subscriber, but about
$2,000 is urgently needed for enlarging
our work, and we ^should be glad of
large subscriptions with the under-
standing that the stock be re-sold to
Individual subscribers later.
DISCOUNT TO STOCKHOLDERS
ON SOCIALIST BOOKS
OF OTHER PUB-
LISHERS.
Heretofore we have been obliged to
make it a rule to allow no discount to
any one on books of other publishers.
The growth of our trade now enable*
us to offer on the following list of
books a discount to our stockholders of
20 per cent where we pay postage, or 30-
per cent where the stockholder calls
at our office, or orders a sufficient
number of books .to go by express at
his expense. Any one not a stock-
holder may become one by remitting.
$10.00 for a share. Other particulars
will be furnished upon application.
On books published by ourselves we
allow stockholders a larger discount,
as explained elsewhere. Those who are
not stockholders may obtain any of
the following books postpaid by remit-
ting the advertised prices:
AMBLING, EDWIARD-The Students*
(Marx; cloth, $1.00.
BAX, E. B.— The Religion of Social-
ism; cloth, $1.00. The Ethics of So-
cialism; cloth, $1.00. Outlooks From
the New Standpoint; cloth, $1.00. The
Story of the French Revolution*
cloth, $1.00; History of the Paris
Commune; paper, 26 cents.
BEKEL, AUGUST — Woman In the
Past, Present and Future; paper, 2t
cents, cloth, 60 cents.
BELLAMY, HDW. — Looking Back-
ward, paper, 60 cents, doth, $L00.
Equality, paper, 60 cents, cloth, $Utt.
BENHAM, G. B.— History of the Paris
Commune; paper, 26 cents, cloth, 76
cents. Peru Before the Conquest;
paper, 16 cents.
BERNSTEIN, EDWARD — Ferdinand
Lassalle as a Social Reformer; cloth,
$1.00.
CARPENTER, EDWARD — Civilisa-
tion, Its Cause and Cure; cloth, $1.00.
England's Ideals, cloth, $1.00. To-
wards Democracy; cloth, $2.26. A
Visit to a Gnani; cloth, $1.00. Love's
Coming of Age; cloth, $1.26. Eros
and Psyche; cloth, $1.00.
DAWSON, WM. H.— German Social-
ism and Ferdinand Lassalle; cloth,
$1.00.
DEVILLE, GABRIEL— The People's
Marx; paper, 76 cents, cloth, $1.60.
ENGELS, FREDERICK— The Condi-
tion of the Working Class in Bns>
land In 1844; cloth, $1.25.
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PUBLISHERS DEPARTMENT
8*7
FBRRI, HNRIOO— Socialism and Mod-
ern Science; cloth, |1.00.
HBRRON, QfEXXBJt&B D— Between Cae-
sar and Jesus; cloth, $1.00.
LJS8AGAKAT— History of the Parte
Commune; cloth, |1.00.
L.ORIA, AOHXLL.E — The Economic
Foundation of Society; cloth, $1.25.
MARX, KAfRLr-The Eighteenth Bru-
malre; paper, 25 cents. The Civil
War in France; paper, 26 cents.
Value, (Price and Profit; cloth, 60
cents. Revolution and Counter-Rev-
olution; cloth, 11.00.
MORRIS, TVM., and RAX, E. B.— So-
cialism. Its Growth and Outcome;
cloth, $1.00.
ROBERTSON, JOHN M.— The Fallacy
of Savins; cloth, H.00.
ROGERS, THORAjLD — Work and
Wages; cloth, $1.00.
SOMBART, PROF. WERNER— Social-
ism and .the Social Movement in the
Nineteenth Century; cloth, |1.26.
VAffil* OHUUHLHB H.— Modern Social-
ism, paper, 26 cents. Principles of
Scientific Socialism; paper, 26 cents.
National Ownership of Railways;
paper, 16 cents.
BOUND VOLUMES.
The bound volume of the Interna-
tional Socialist Review tor the first
year will be ready in a few days, and a
little over one hundred copies are still
available to fill orders sent in at once.
The price will be $2.00, postage includ-
ed. But, as we are particularly anx-
ious to extend our subscription list at
this time, we will send a copy post-
paid as a premium to any present sub-
scriber who sends us the names of two
new subscribers for one year for |2.00.
CHARLES H. KERR & COHPANY, Publishers,
56 Fifth Avenue, Chicago.
/■
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828 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW
CENTRAL SOCIALIST LECTURE BUREAU
We are happy to announce the organization of the Central Socialist
Lecture Bureau to supply socialist speakers for audiences and audi-
ences for speakers.
The 0. S. L. Bureau purposes the organization into circuits of all
the locals and cities and industrial centers now unorganized in the
states of Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan. The
hope Is through this bureau to stimulate the work where locals now
are and plant new ones where none now exist, thereby subserving
most important functions in our propaganda work. The advantages
of a bureau of this kind have been long recognized, but the difficulty
has been to devise a plan that would in operation not burden our
comrades financially beyond endurance and at the same time give ouf
speakers and organizers a support Comrade Geo. £. Blgelow, by per-
sonal experience, has developed a plan which he makes work and
avails to accomplish both of these purposes; and which has proven
so successful in a protracted tour in Canada and the east as to receive
the commendation of such well known workers as Secretary Leonard
D. Abbott, of New York, J. Mahlon Barnes, of Philadelphia, and other
eastern comrades; and of such well known socialists in the central
west as J. B. Smiley, author of "To What Are Trusts Leading* 9 ;
Walter Thomas Mills, of the Chicago night and correspondence school
of social economics; A. M. Simons, editor of the International Socialist
Review; Charles H. Kerr, publisher; J. Wauhope, editor of the Work-
ers' Call; P. G. Strickland, Thomas J. Morgan and others.
The plan in brief is this. Group the locals and unorganized cities
and industrial centers into circuits as suggested above. Let each place
or local pay to the speaker or organizer railroad fare of $2.00; furnish
a place to speak; give speaker the collection and all he can make on
exclusive sale of literature, of which each speaker will carry a full
supply of the best published. At places where there is a local the
comrades can do this, and if there is none three or four individuals
can do as much and thus enjoy the treat and satisfaction of hearing,
and having others hear, our best speakers. It is desired that we have
uniformity in frequency of meetings, and that each place hold one
about once a month, alternating speakers.
Such well known socialist advocates as Walter T. Mills, Charles H.
Kerr, A. M. Simons, J. B. Smiley, Thomas J. Morgan, F. G. Strick-
land, George B. Bigelow, May Wood Simons, May Walden Kerr, J.
Wauhope, August Klenkie and others are already booked, while Max
Hayes and others are solicited and no doubt will be added to the list
in a few days.
It is desired that all who read this and desire to be enrolled as one
of the points on the circuit send in your name and address without
further solicitation; and that all those who may receive letters respond
at once in order that we may get the circuits mapped out, the plans
perfected and the work well going before the opening of the fall cam-
paign. Address Central Socialist Lecture Bureau, 56 Fifth Avenue,
Chicago, 111.
v.
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